


For Who Does The Caged Bird Sing?

by Whispering_Sumire



Series: TW Bingo♘ [12]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, BAMF Lydia, BAMF Stiles, But He Gets Better, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Character Death, Cora calls Stiles babe, Cuddling & Snuggling, Derek Deserves Nice Things, Derek Needs a Hug, Dream Sharing, Dreams, Escape, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Group Hugs, Heartfelt Conversations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lydia playing Cupid, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Malia Tate Doesn't Exist, Pack Bonding, Pack Family, Pack Feels, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Raven Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall (Teen Wolf) Bashing, Scott is a Bad Friend, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Slow Burn, Stiles Stilinski Gets Bitten, Symbolism, Therapy, Threesome - M/M/M, Torture, Uncle/Nephew Incest, Werebirds, Wingfic, or I tried and I have no idea how it went but please don't kill me?, poetic prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:17:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whispering_Sumire/pseuds/Whispering_Sumire
Summary: "Shit," she growls, dragging herself to him. He doesn't look too bad off, a little roughed up, easy enough to wake with a jostle, and as soon as his eyes snap open, she's hissing, "what the hell are you doing here?Howare you here? You shouldn'tbe- oof!"He's got her gathered in his arms, laughing with a manic kind of relief, "Oh my god, oh mygod, Ifoundyou!"She sighs, but latches onto him, incapable of denying herself the comfort of a gentle touch, not after- not after everything. She closes her eyes, breathes him in, lemon rinds and snowdrops andPack, lets herself melt into the touch, soft and tender."You found me," She says, "but now somebody needs to find you, huh?"He pulls away a little startled, blinks at her, smiles sheepishly, "Uhh, yeah. I guess so."She huffs out a breath and cuffs him, "Idiot."[Or: The one where Stiles finds Derek's missing Betas, gets captured and tortured by the Alphas, all while everyoneelselooks forhim. Add a few creepy dreams, some wings, and a whole lotta magic.]





	1. For Those It Protects

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is already finished, I just cut it up a bit because it translated better that way. There will be five chapters, each posted a day or so after the chapter that proceeds it, and a _small_ possibility for an Epilogue if people really want one.
> 
> Content Warning: Heavily inspired by poetry.
> 
> Trigger Warning: Torture, Rape, and Death happen mostly _only_ in this chapter, but they're referenced throughout the work, so... beware, please, and be safe.

Erica whines in the back of her throat when they bring Stiles in, beaten, unconscious, because it's too fucking similar. A familiarity in coincidence she doesn't want to be party to, doesn't want to be the _cause_ of, not again.

She's happy he's alive, she really is, she'd been wondering about it ever since Chris had let she and Boyd go, because neither of them knew if a human could've survived such a terribly vicious beating. But the Alphas had snatched them while they were tracking his scent, and they never got to find out if that thick-sweet blood trail ended in a dead body. Apparently not, as evidenced by the perfectly _alive_ boy in front of her.

"Shit," she growls, dragging herself to him. He doesn't look too bad off, a little roughed up, easy enough to wake with a jostle, and as soon as his eyes snap open, she's hissing, "what the hell are you doing here? _How_ are you here? You shouldn't _be_ \- oof!"

He's got her gathered in his arms, laughing with a manic kind of relief, "Oh my god, oh my _god_ , I _found_ you!"

She sighs, but latches onto him, incapable of denying herself the comfort of a gentle touch, not after- not after everything. She closes her eyes, breathes him in, lemon rinds and snowdrops and _Pack_ , lets herself melt into the touch, soft and tender.

"You found me," She says, "but now somebody needs to find you, huh?"

He pulls away a little startled, blinks at her, smiles sheepishly, "Uhh, yeah. I guess so."

She huffs out a breath and cuffs him, "Idiot."

* * *

They're in a vault, trapped, whether or not they're chained up depends wholly on the whims of their captors that day, who gets taken out of the vault and _'played with'_ depends on who can piss them off the most. Stiles is currently employee of the month in that regard. He's _good_ at pissing people off, it's a skill, a specialty, and he's a fucking natural.

Boyd is- he's not doing too great, always curled up in the corner, his stoic silence now a traumatized one. Stiles doesn't really know Cora that well, he thinks she thinks he's an idiot, but she also seems secretly grateful, her eyes remind him of Derek's, when they hit the light just right. And Erica is doing her best to be strong, but she's kinda falling apart at the seams.

Everyday, an Alpha comes in, makes a game of who will be their toy for the evening, their _entertainment_. Everyday, Stiles goads the Alpha who enters their space, distracts, annoys, on one memorable occasion, broke a fucking nose just to keep their attention. Everyday it gets worse, and they toss him back into the vault with the others, bruised and bloodied, but _not_ broken, _never_ fucking _broken_.

Erica pulls herself up from the floor next to Boyd and limps over to him, wraps her body around his, steals the pain that was making it hard to breathe, to _be_ , and asks, "You're human, what are you even doing to yourself?"

"I won't let them hurt you," he murmurs past the lump in his throat, tries to ignore the shiver-shake in his bones, the way staying awake, staying _aware_ is getting harder and harder.

"We'de survive, babe," Cora tells him in that gruff, irritated way she has, all brusque and jagged and angry, but her body is soft and warm when it cuddles into his other side, supple, "we're wolves."

Boyd makes a noise, half whimper, half grunt, all animal, crawling over sprawl out at their feet.

"You're Pack," he whispers, even as the tears come and the darkness threatens to drown him, "I _can't_ let them hurt you."

* * *

He's losing little pockets of time, becoming less and less coherent, and he isn't _healing_ , not like they would, so she doesn't _understand_ how or why he keeps fucking doing it. He's Pack, sure, but he doesn't even _know_ her, if he's so dead-set on protecting his Pack-mates, he should've pushed them toward _her_ , the stranger who hasn't given up _any_ information about herself.

The she-wolf comes, the one who lets the animal within her ride just beneath the skin, who _prowls_ and rumbles and likes kicking, barefoot and clawed, best. Cora snarls when the she-wolf goes toward Boyd, and Erica cowers. Alpha red eyes flash at her and full, pretty, burnt-sienna lips grin around sharp, gleaming teeth.

"Do you want to be my toy, pretty girl? I'm sure Ennis would _love_ to make a _bitch_ out of you, see your back all tattered," she coos, cackles when Cora clicks her teeth at her, vicious.

"I'm pretty sure he would love it if you wore some fucking _shoes_ sometime, too," Stiles slurs from his place on the floor, against the wall leaning into Boyd's side. He smirks even as his breath rattles, shifts to sit up fully even though Cora can _hear_ the unnatural squish of something inside him not being where it's supposed to be, smell the scent of fresh blood and pain spilling off of him. "But we don't always get what we want, now, do we?"

"Mmm, you like to think you're so _clever_ ," she starts, but her eyes are still on Cora.

"No, foot-fetish barbie, I'm not _clever_ , I'm just a hell of a lot fucking smarter than _you_. Don't take it to heart, though, I'm smarter than most people, and I'm sure you're well acquainted with your own inadequacy." She growls, turns her head with a whip of dark hair, snaps at him angrily, eyes flashing again, and goddamn it if Stiles doesn't look _victorious_. "Or maybe you're not," he laughs, "maybe you actually _think_ you're intelligent. Aww, that's just _adorable_!"

The she-wolf stomps over to him, grabs him by the scruff of his neck, claws digging into delicate white skin, ignoring the strained attempts Erica and Boyd make at trying to keep him with them, at trying to make her _stop_ , or, even, change her mind. And there's this moment, a tiny one, of indecision, when Boyd grabs onto Stiles' leg, begging, but the hesitation evaporates when Stiles sing-songs, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much. What'd'ya say, wanna play a round of trivia? Bet you twenty bucks and a flash grenade I'll win. In fact, I bet there's nothing in that pretty little head of yours but _air_."

With a snarl she throws him across the room, into the wall, an angry, vicious, deadly sort of crunch, then a pained, desperate, bloody sort of laugh. She saunters over to him, grabs him by the hair, drags him out of the vault behind her.

Erica doesn't cry like Boyd does, like she used to the first few weeks Stiles was here, she just holds the other wolf and stares at the now-closed vault door, her eyes a deadened brown, her face blank, her scent sour.

They all flinch when the distant sound of his screaming fills the air, surrounds them thickly, like a pressure, pushing them all down, making the shadows smoke and whatever light there is to spare dull.

Boyd sobs into Erica's skirt while she absently runs her fingertips over his sweat-soaked back, hums a dissonant lullaby as she rocks them gently back and forth. Cora can't help but wonder if being forced to watch your Pack-mate suffer while you are unable to do anything is worse than undergoing the suffering yourself.

"It's okay," she hears Stiles say, he sounds so far away, and it isn't just because of the thick metal walls between them. "We'll be okay. They'll find us, don't worry."

She and Erica and Boyd, all, hang onto his words like fucking gospel, and part of her wants desperately to scratch at the door, to howl, to destroy everything, because how is this fair? How can she possibly find Pack so earnest and loyal in a situation like this? How can she love a boy who she barely knows, who barely knows _her_ , but who fights so fervently for them, who gives them sweet-soft reassurances while he's being _tortured_ for their sake?

There's a little stifled gasp of horror, then, "I love you guys, I love you."

Screams return, empty out of him like water, flows into their metal casket, drowns them, impartial, sickening, horrifying, ceaseless.

* * *

His eyes open to the dark of the vault, everything is fuzzy around the edges, and he has no idea how he really got here, can just barely remember what the sun used to feel like, warm on his face.

"I miss crickets," he says, tongue thick, and he feels the bodies around him shift, he doesn't know whose arm is around his middle, whose legs are cradling his head, whose hand is tightened around his, but it doesn't really matter. They're all there and safe and comfortable, hot, which is good, because he's so, so cold. "The sound of them. Miss 'em almost 's bad as m' dad."

"Do you-" Cora's voice cracks, the hand in his squeezes until his bones creak. It should be painful, probably, but he can't feel anything beyond their bodies pressed against his and the cottony blur, the fuzzed-out numbness that contorts everything, makes it all heavier and lighter at the same time. "Derek Hale. I came- I came here looking for him, he's my- he's my brother. Do you guys know him?"

"Sourwolf," Stiles murmurs, "he'll be so happy to see you. 'vryone else 's dead, 'cept creepy Uncle Peter. But you knew that, didn't you? Sorry. Hey, maybe you could make him smile? He doesn't smile enough. I bet it'd be jus' like, hmm, crickets. Bet he smiles like crickets chirping."

Erica, a little bit deliriously, giggles, and puffs of damp air cast across his neck.

"You know him?" Cora sounds wrecked, choked on emotions like _hope_ , something so tiny and hard to find in this place. Stiles' eyelids feel heavy, but he manages to drag his gaze over to her shaking form, reaches over to pet her arm soothingly.

"Alpha," he says by way of answer, and she sniffs, smiles tremulously.

"He's _alive_ ," she seems knocked breathless by it.

"And he's comin' for us," he tells them. He doesn't know how long they've been here, he doesn't know if they'll actually get out of this alive, he's starting to doubt they will, but he knows Derek is searching, he knows because he'd been helping, guilt-ridden by the fact that he'd _left them there_ , with Gerard. It might not have been by choice, but that didn't fucking matter.

He knows, too, that Derek won't ever stop looking, unable to lose another Pack, another family, and hating himself for having ever pushed them away in the first place. He doesn't know if Derek cares so much about him, since, despite all the time he's spent at the loft this summer, compiling data, researching, searching for the Betas relentlessly, he's still not Pack, not technically. Since he's _Scott's_.

Scott, who denied Derek so completely, and used him, threw him away after like a dirty rag or something. Scott, who didn't notice he was missing, hurting, who didn't give a damn about what happened to Derek's Betas, so long as _Allison_ was safe and coddled and cared for.

Stiles isn't trying to be bitter, but it's hard not to be, it's also a little hard not to be disgusted by his best friend's actions when he's got a pretty good idea, just based on evidence, what Kate must've done to their Alpha.

He wonders what it would do to Derek, to find them all, dead? He doesn't want to think about it, he doesn't dare imagine the heartbreak, the horror of losing a _second_ Pack, of re-losing a sister you didn't even know was still alive for you to lose, one you'd already grieved. And even though that might be how this ends, even though his hope is a battered, withered, dried-up thing, theirs isn't.

This is something he can give them, to hold onto, to stay brave for, and it isn't even a lie.

Derek _is_ coming for them.

He just won't get to them in time.

* * *

Boyd knows what Stiles is going through, doing, experiencing.

He understands, because it was what he was, scapegoat, protector, tortured, before Stiles came. He can't, he can't anymore, watch, endure, pray. He's so tired, and he's cried all the tears he has to cry, he's yearned, he's hated, he's wondered, he's _wished_. He should've been a better Beta, more understanding, more patient. He'd known his Alpha was fucked up, he'd known the man probably needed more time, practice, people. But he was impatient.

He had the strength, he had the companionship he'd needed, wanted, Derek had nothing left to offer him.

He was so _sure_ he could do better.

But he should've tried harder, pushed Derek to be better, he has a feeling that if he'd waited, Stiles would've joined their Pack, because Stiles is a little like him, he needs people the same way he does, the same way Erica, Isaac, and Derek do. Scott's different, Scott doesn't get it, need it, _want_ it. He has a feeling that Stiles could've been the catalyst, the thing that brought the best out of their Alpha, maybe, if this had never happened, if they'd never run, if Gerard and the Alphas had never decided to-

So many if's, so many maybe's, so many half-hearted daydreams.

He decides, when he hears skin sizzle and rats scratch frantically, muffled squeaks of desperation underlying wretched screams of agony, that he's done. His skin feels paper-thin, and he's all raw ache wherever his soul once was, gaping wound that won't even scab over.

Tomorrow, he thinks tiredly, pressing into Erica's thigh, squeezing his eyes shut against the overwhelming pressure of sound, scents of helplessness and blood curdling the air. Tomorrow he'll take Stiles' place, one last time, give him a break for a day, and then he'll be done.

* * *

They take Boyd's death like the explosion it is, feel the dead-weight of shrapnel in their hearts that looks like grief but acts like the grim reaper, on their heels, constantly. They don't get any rest. They don't get reprieve from the Alphas and their corrosive smiles, sugar-coated claws, because no, they don't hurt without a sweet word, they always coo and titter and kiss, they always suffuse their violence with candy-gloss and the silence would be more welcoming than the suffocation their simpering words bring.

The capacity to mourn is taken from them, crushed in the hands of their wardens who laugh in the face of their sorrow, like grief is the war-song of the weak.

Stiles can't handle it. He wants to ball up Erica's broken heart in his fist and shove it down their throats just so they know what this _feels_ like. He wants to take all of Cora's cracked open howls and turn them into weapons so he can repaint the walls with someone else's blood, because surely they'd _deserve_ it. Surely his youth and pride and smile was meant for this world, was meant for life and laughter and long, stupid, silly days, where their apathy and rage and sickening glee was meant for the death they so easily offered him when he held his head high and said he wanted to be their toy for the night.

Stiles wishes he could blame himself, but after a day or two wallowing in his misery- feeling like he _deserved_ the pot trapping the rodents on his stomach, burning him and causing them to flee the only way they know how, _through_ , deserved the way Kali ground herself against him as she tore into his skin and found her own satisfaction while he writhed and choked on his own blood, deserved the way his body became a rotting carcass of itself because Boyd must be rotting, too, wherever they buried him- he remembered the warmth in the way Boyd smiled at them right before vault door slammed shut with a finality none of them realized until it was already too fucking late.

Boyd had known.

Boyd had known and he had chosen it and... Stiles can't.

He's not going to fault Boyd for that, not after everything.

Cora pulls him in close when one of the twins tosses him carelessly back in their cell. Her chains clink as she trembles and heaves for hard-fought breath, sobs into his hair and begs him not to die, to please, please not leave them. Erica crawls over and tucks him into his pants, ignores the broken zipper, slips the button back into its hole with bony fingers. Puts her small, thin hands in his, doesn't lace their fingers together, or hold, just caresses their palms.

"I'll go, tomorrow," she says softly.

"No," he tells her, and, ah, it must've been longer than a few days, because they both still at the sound of his voice, like it's startling, like they're not used to any sounds coming from his mouth but screams.

"You'll die, Stiles," Cora cries, "you'll die just like he did. Please, we can- we can take _turns_ , we can-"

"No."

" _Stiles_ ," she begs.

"Do you want to die?" Erica asks, with a measured tone, and something glinting in her eyes that tells him she knows, she _knows_ what Boyd did.

"No."

But he's going to.

They're all going to.

"Okay," she says, with just a hint of a smile on her cracked lips. The expression doesn't fit her face, with her limp eyelashes and her hollow cheeks and her dead eyes. "We just need to hold on a little longer, then. Derek's coming for us."

The faith he'd instilled in her blooms, plants a seed in Cora, makes them stronger. He's glad he did that, it was manipulative, and probably a little bit more of a lie than he's willing to admit, but it gets Cora to stop crying, gets them both to stop trying to convince him to let them take the brunt of it, even for a day. After Boyd he just, he doesn't trust that they'd be returned to him, and even if they were, he doesn't trust that they'd still be whole. He'd rather be an emptied out desolate thing who fought for his friends as long as he fucking could than the prince of a kingdom of two broken, mindless girls.

"He's coming for us," Cora repeats, like a benediction, sniffling, pulling him closer as black veins ride up her arms.

He wonders if Boyd knew what Stiles knows, he wonders if Boyd knew that even if Derek was coming for them, it wasn't going to do any good. It's only a matter of time, he thinks, and closes his eyes.

He dreams of his mother picking apricots, of Boyd's claws tearing at the flesh of the fruit, of licking juice off their sticky fingers like a pet or a child, of them smiling indulgently and the sunlight pouring into their skin, coating it with midmorning.

An ominous voice rings out amongst the trees and steals their attention away. The sun turns to dust in the sky, and their skin dries up, crinkles in like foil and sprouts flowers made of ash. The dropped apricots rot and ooze, and hands he doesn't recognize grab roughly at his shoulders, pull him tight into skin, plunge him inside of a womb that doesn't fit right, that makes him feel small in the wrong ways, but he dives into the pink fluid because he has nowhere else to go.

An echoey heartbeat sounds in his ears, behind the breast of the woman who carries him in her belly, clawed fingers penetrate slush and poke and prod at him, a monster laughs, pulls him out of their guts and plants him underneath a burning house, in Peter Hale's old grave. He's still covered in amniotic fluid, and the char and smoke cling to his body.

When he turns to look, there are glowing blue eyes peering out at him, and he says, "I'm sorry I burned you."

Because that feels like something he should apologize for.

"It's okay," Peter says. "You had to."

"I think it's me burning now. Just not with fire."

"We'll save you, Stiles. We _will_."

"No, you won't. But that's okay. I don't mind."

* * *

"I wrote a letter to the Goddess you were named for," Stiles tells Kali one day, as she shoves his softness inside of her with a filthy moan, he isn't even fazed anymore, "and she condemned you for your ego."

"Shut up," she growls, and seals his lips with a kiss that feels dirtier than the blood cached against his skin, the _actual_ dirt that soils his body.

He fades out for awhile, he doesn't really need to be present for this, just agony and repetition, like when you say a word over and over and over again until it loses all its meaning. He wonders what it says about him that the torture is getting boring. He wonders what it says about him that he doesn't even miss who he was before this.

He thinks he used to, he isn't so sure. He thinks he used to lament over the boy who recklessly ran into the woods in search of a dead body, the boy who, despite what Gerard had done to him, went home, kissed his father, ran Jackson over with a jeep in order to save the day, the boy who wanted his friends to be safe and managed to follow the thinnest trail, the smallest lead, to find them. The boy who was excited to see Erica, and who didn't know what it meant when she wasn't as excited to see him.

Whoever he was before died a messy death at the hands of cruel monsters with vermillion eyes who use their biology as an excuse for their savage barbarity. They are not monsters because they are wolves, their monstrosity was borne of their humanity, though they can use the animal beneath their skin to wield it all the better, Stiles knows, it isn't the moon that causes them to be like this.

His thoughts stray, go to middle places, intangible strands of thought that lie somewhere in between the beginning and the end but fall just short of words or coherency. Black spots begin to crowd his vision, limbs going loose, mouth falling open.

Death tastes like apricots. Smiles like crickets chirping. Looks at him with worried hazel eyes and thick, furrowed brows. Tells him to hold on.

"Shit," one of the twins says, "his heartbeat is slowing down, I think he's bleeding out."

"You're kidding me," the other twin groans. "Kali, I thought we told you to go _easy_ on 'im."

She sighs, "I _was_. I think the stitches tore open. Aww, man, and I was having _such_ fun."

"Duke don't want no more dead bodies," Ennis gripes in an indifferent tone. "You should bite 'im, since he's _your_ favorite."

Kali laughs, "Oh, god. I think Dukie would be more pissed about me having a Beta than he would about me killing one of our hostages."

"Would still be Derek's Beta, even if you turned him," Ennis says with a shrug, and she makes a considering noise. "'Sides, it might work in our favor, Hecatolite workin' on three insteada two."

A thoughtful hum, and then she leans down, her hair brushing the side of his face, her wetness grinding down against him, sharp teeth grazing his shoulder, a lick, a sick giggle, and then a searing pierce that drowns out everything else, except one thing, _one thing_ he holds onto.

 _Hecatolite_.

He doesn't know why, but he sure as hell knows it's important.

* * *

Stiles screams.

It isn't the first time she's heard him scream, but it's the first time he's been so close when the sound stumbles out of his lips like the last dregs of whatever sanity or hope he may have had, crushed by the black goo bubbling up from the bite-mark in his shoulder. And it doesn't come willingly, he bites down on it because he doesn't want them to hear, hates how they feel when they know he's in pain, hates seeing them wide-eyed, desperate, _hungry_ , not for food but for _something_. To be able to help, maybe.

His body arches up, helplessly, and sweat droplets run valleys through blood and dirt and whatever sewage they leave him in when they take him, but the sweat isn't clean. It smells like sour, sweet-rot, like the trees do when winter comes.

And he screams.

Through his teeth, with his body held taught and his heart beating wildly in his chest. They don't hold him, he's burning in a way that reminds her of the flames that licked up her arms when her mama pushed her away from the window, because she was already outside, and the mountain ash wouldn't let her in to save them anyway. But they press fingertips to his slick skin, they try to take as much pain as they possibly can and they pray, because neither of them can do this without him.

It doesn't have anything to do with the pain.

He could've stopped offering himself up as their martyr days ago, he never even had to in the first place, he's theirs. He's Pack and he's _theirs_ and he talks, even when his lips are cracked and bleeding, his jaw is swelled, his throat is contorted with bruises and burns from chain or frayed rope, he tells them _stories_.

He tells Erica about his mother and her perfume and her smile and the way he held her when she was sick and dying, even though his body was so much _smaller_ than hers.

He tells Cora about Derek and Peter, about what Peter did, has done, doesn't apologize for, but how he sometimes looks so guilty and terrified even when he acts arrogant and pompous, how Derek is a mirror of that, but surly and timid, both of them bravado boys who lost everything and are trying, now, but they're idiots. He tells her she should forgive them.

He tells them about his father, and about his dreams, and about the one apricot tree in the Preserve that he and Scott roped a tire to, made a swing that he'd forgotten about until last year, and that he's pretty sure a squirrel lives in it, now. He tells them nonsensical things and he tells them it'll be okay, Derek's coming, it'll be alright soon.

He makes them hope.

He makes it seem like prayer will actually work.

And Cora's lost so many Pack-mates in her lifetime, lost Boyd, here, she can't, she _can't_ lose Stiles.

"Stiles," Erica breathes, and it sounds like a stone thrown a long way down a well, splashing water against screams that reverberate within them, don't stop to contemplate her pleas because they mean _nothing_ in the face of this.

The Bite will either take, or it won't, and their tears won't change that, their need won't change that.

Cora wants to comfort her, but she won't, she doesn't know how, doesn't know how to wind straw into gold like that, its an impossible task to ask of a girl who lost her whole family and never had anyone to fall back on, who went Omega, who only kept herself from going feral by snatching breadcrumb kindnesses from Alphas who took pity on her, but never considered her for their ranks. She can't thread a needle with soothe and sew Erica back up the way Stiles can.

She can only watch as the girl next to her falls apart and the boy between them, the one who's always holding them together, makes his way toward death alone and in agony.

His heartbeat stutters out of rhythm.

There is an ache in her heart where all her Pack-bonds used to be, a place carved out for every member of her family, scarred over with time. Three blistering lights shined there, bold and beautiful and broken. When Boyd died, and she felt the familiar strain and snap, she had been unprepared.

But there is no way to prepare yourself for death.

She presses her knuckles into the skin above her heart and waits.

She doesn't think he will survive the night.

"Stiles," Erica breathes again, like the solemn ringing of a bell, like the ticking of a broken clock, like a death knell.

* * *

Cora holds her, has been holding her. She doesn't know for how long, it's not like there's any way to tell time here, they can't see or feel the moon or the sun, they're soaked in timeless shadow with their asses falling asleep on cold marble flooring, their wrists and ankles shackled to chains. She supposes she could try to tell time with how much longer her hair is, with how small her body has become with no food to feed it, with how many heartbeats its been since Stiles stopped screaming.

But the numbers blur together, and she's forgotten what she looked like before this. She has a sense-memory, but it's clogged with the shaky foundations of someone who underwent a transformation just for the sake of- what? Getting back at them, being angry, being powerful, being some type of woman instead of a sick little girl.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days.

He isn't dead yet, he's still in pain, but they're too weak to take any more and he burns like a furnace. His cheeks are like rose petals in the snow, the rest of him too pale, and she wonders if _this_ is what Snow White looked like while she was being chased down by her step-mother's hound.

The vault door opens, and she can hear the click of claws with each soft footstep. She digs blunt fingernails into the palm of her hand, watches Stiles breathe, watches the blackest plasma rush to the surface of his wound, trickle down his shoulder, fall with a heavy _plop_ onto the grimy floor.

"Aww," Kali sighs, and the sick thing is, she sounds _genuinely_ disappointed. "I think he's rejecting the bite..." She laughs, "Ah, well, that's what we get for playing with a _human_ I guess," she says the word like an insult, but it isn't, wasn't, Stiles is, was, the best of them. "I'm sure you two will be much more... _durable_. But," she tuts, "which one of you should I take? You're both so _pretty_."

"Take me," she says dully, and Cora pulls her closer with a pained-sounding growl. She looks up at the dark haired girl, and tries to smile through the numbness she feels. "You know more about this than I do, you need to keep an eye on him." Besides, she wouldn't mind the pain, if only as a distraction, something to cut through the empty that's swallowed her heart and left a hole there.

Cora swallows, nods, and before Erica even has a chance to _stand_ , threads of her hair are being wound around vicious fingers. She cries out in surprise and hurt when she's tugged upward.

"Ahaha, so we get the _blondie_ , you pretty sweet li'l thing, Ennis and I will have _so much_ fun with you." Kali purrs, and Erica tenses to be thrown or dragged or-

A slow heart returns to hummingbird strength, a breathy gasp, and then her hair is being yanked free. A loud thud, a shocked groan, and Erica's stumbling to the ground, twisting around with wide eyes to see _Stiles_ , her Stiles, and _god_ , he looks like an _angel_.

His hair is bone-white, his pallor ruddy with a new kind of health, wounds beginning to sluggishly heal, eyes flashing Beta-gold, but brighter, more, and _wings_. He has wings so beautiful, and white, and fluffy, the cleanest, brightest, _purest_ things she's ever seen, flared out behind him, not even all the way because this _huge_ bank vault isn't _big enough_ for them.

His eyes linger on Erica and Cora for a moment, chest rising and falling with his panting breaths, clear claws, longer and sharper, extend and retract, his eyes flashing back and forth, human to animal to human. His fists clench when Kali lets out a beastly growl behind him, and he actually _smirks_ as he turns toward her.

"How about you play with someone your own size?" He says, and the she-wolf launches herself at him.

* * *

His wings are impossible, is what they keep saying, what he _is_ is impossible.

How far they're willing to go, now that he can heal, is fucking terrifying, and he doesn't know how to put the wings _away_ , how to go fully human, so he can't protect himself when they cut the offending limbs _off_.

The girls help him endure the fever and the agony that comes when they fucking _regrow_ , because, apparently, if he's going to be impossible, he might as well take even _that_ to extremes.

When the twins come into the vault the next day and see him all flight-ready again, they drag him out, and get the mysterious, ever elusive, Deucalion.

His wings, he finds out, are extremely sensitive. His captors are curious. The experiments are endless. Pluck every father, watch in fascination as they regrow, as Stiles writhes and moans and begs because it's itchy and _frustrating_ and _uncomfortable_ \- preening of mature pin-feathers required. Fuck with the pin-feathers while they're still immature which, _ow_. Destroy every feather and induce molting? Weird.

Everything about this is weird.

He knew that not every Bitten turned _wolf_ , but what the fuck is _he_?

It doesn't really seem to matter to them, in the end, impressive wing-span aside, he's still just a Beta, suitable for their purposes, and interesting for a time, but not worthy of Deucalion's absolute attention, the boss-man, apparently, has better things to do.

Meanwhile, Stiles may actually have a _plan_.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

Something that could get them _out_.

He doesn't really care about himself, he doesn't _want_ to die, but he'd accepted it as inevitable, only, maybe, with this...

"Your mom could do the full-shift, right?" He asks Cora as he inspects the small window in their ceiling.

"Yeah," Cora says, drawing out the word slowly as she follows his gaze with more than a little confusion.

"Do you think I'd be a bird? A small bird?"

Cora's eyes widen, and she snaps them back to him with awed, bewildered understanding.

"Do you even think you _could_?" Erica breathes, "Actually fully shift?"

"I have no fucking idea," he says, "but I think I have to _try_."


	2. For The Gods Of Freedom & Sacrifice

"What do your dreams have to do with anything?" Derek asks, this close to putting his Uncle through the wall just to get him to stop talking because this is the _third month_ they've been missing.

"I don't honestly _know_ ," Peter admits, running a hand through his hair, and he looks _tired_ , like he's been awake for days, but they _all_ do. The sheriff hasn't slept since they told him, gave him proof, has been looking for his son under every goddamned roof, and _nothing_. Scott has been prowling the Preserve every night, every morning, like if he just checks all the trees _one more time_ , the Alphas scents will come, like it doesn't start and stop with that goddamned door, like the Alphas don't have an Emissary, aren't good at hiding.

Allison. He doesn't know about Allison, doesn't want to pick apart her washed-out sense of grief to find the helpful girl underneath, she can take that, give it to Scott, he wants it more, anyway. He thinks about claws in the back of his neck and being forced _open_ , not in the way that _Kate_ forced him open, but the feeling is so similar, so indistinguishable that he can't- and, he thinks, they deserve each other.

Isaac simmers, like there's a low heat underneath his veins, like his Pack-bonds are causing him to boil out of his skin, and though he refrains from flinching, it's harder to touch him these days, to look at him without his shoulders beginning to hunch, like he's too small for his body or he's too big for this space and he just wants to hide until everything is _okay_. He's tried to look for them, to help, but the distance is killing him, the tension has him frayed, and its like he's in hiding from the reality, the horror, of what's probably going on with his _friends_. This too new family, already falling apart, and in danger, now, because of it.

Derek blames himself for this. If they hadn't been running away, if he hadn't pushed them, maybe they'd still be here, still be safe.

"But you think they're important?"

"I-" Peter hesitates, fingernails tapping against wood, agitated and restless. His eyes rove over the map, but they aren't looking _at_ it, they're digging underneath laminated paper, finding some ethereal place, searching through whatever the _fuck_ it is that makes him think what's going on during his sleeping moments _means_ something, could _help_ them with this. "Lydia," he says, finally.

Lydia and Jackson, both his responsibility, technically, but not Pack.

He tries not to be sick at the thought of Lydia holding him down, cutting at flesh, making him-

"What _about_ her?" He growls.

"The... _conversations_ I had with her, beyond the veil- a spiritual connection made when I gave her the Bite, one I used to, well," he makes a gesture with the flick of his wrist. "That's what this feels like, they don't _feel_ like _dreams_. They feel like visions."

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose and tries very, very hard to ignore the burgeoning headache. He's exhausted. He wants to rip something open. He wants to fucking sleep. He wants his Uncle to shut the fuck up. "Couldn't that just be your connection to Lydia? Festering, or something?"

Peter shakes his head, "It's not her... I think it's Stiles."

"And why the fuck would you think that?"

"He's the only reoccurring theme, the dreams _smell_ like him and there's just-" he makes a sound in the back of his throat, something in between a sigh and a groan- "It's _Stiles_."

"Okay. Well, do they tell you anything?"

"Yes. They tell me he's in a bad place, mentally speaking, and that he doesn't believe he's going to survive much longer."

"Thanks, Peter," Derek bites out sardonically, "that really helps a lot."

Peter slumps in on himself, put-out and unnerved, "We need to find them."

Desperation isn't really a good look on the man, but humanity is. Derek sighs.

"Tell me something I _don't_ know."

* * *

Allison fiddles with the hem of her skirt and Lydia gives her a _look_.

"What's wrong?" she asks, resigned to being some kind of sympathetic or empathetic or therapeutic.

"It's," the girl sighs as they climb up the steep hill, and Lydia damns her fashion-sensible shoes because her feet are probably going to be killing her tonight. A wary glance at the three boys stalking ahead of them tells her all she needs to know before Allison even opens her mouth to speak again.

"You should go for it," she advises brusquely, and Allison's wide eyes snap to her as she begins sputtering. "Look, you've obviously still got feelings for Scott, but you two broke up, okay? Explore your options."

She frowns guiltily, "Is it really that obvious?"

It is. Her growing affection for the Lahey boy is a barely hidden secret, Lydia's sure that even if she were thick she'd have noticed it. _Jackson's_ noticed it. Scott probably has too, but is willfully, stubbornly ignoring it. Ignorance is bliss, selective blindness, endless optimism, true love, yada, yada.

"Um..." Allison goes back to playing with the hem of her skirt, and it really takes effort not to roll her eyes. "That's not... actually the problem though. I know I'm single, and, I mean, I can date whoever I want. It's just..."

"What?" Lydia huffs, irritated.

"With everything," she gestures a hand around, indicating their current predicament. Walking around uselessly in the woods looking for Stiles, Erica, and Boyd, like they have been ever since the Stilinski boy went missing, like combing over the same area of ground consistently enough will suddenly make them turn up. "It isn't right," she says, seeming ashamed to have even thought about _living her life_ for one moment, "under the circumstances."

"Ally, look. As far as I can tell, you're a hunter, your friends consist mostly of the supernatural, and strange and dangerous things aren't going to put themselves on hold just so that you can pursue your love life. It isn't the right time now, it's not going to be the right time later, but tomorrow it could be _you_ we're fruitlessly searching for. Don't waste time waiting, if it's something you want, _take_ it."

Allison blinks, chews on her bottom lip as she looks ahead, her eyes raking over the backs of Scott and Isaac and Jackson, all three of them wolfed out and sniffing at the air.

"Okay," she says with sudden determination, nodding to herself. "Okay. Yeah, you're right."

Lydia smiles at her, and is about to say something congratulatory and proud when a white bird speeds through the sky, almost too fast to be normal or natural, hurtling through the air above them without any intent to stop. Suddenly, Scott lifts his nose to the sky.

"You smell that?" He asks.

"Yeah," Isaac says, although he sounds a little unsure. "It smelled like Stiles, sorta? But just for, like, a second."

"I didn't smell anything," Jackson grumbles, giving them both a narrow-eyed glare. Always so competitive.

"It came from here, I think," Scott grins, suddenly breaking out into a run toward what was, most likely, a phantom smell. Even if it wasn't, she's not so sure they're going to like what they find.

It has been _months_ after all.

With a put-upon sigh, flicking her hair over her shoulder, ignoring the ache in her ankles, she trudges after them.

* * *

The window was open.

Not that the loft didn't have air-conditioning, not that it was cooler outside, not that there was anything in particular to hear see or smell that was new. But Peter needed it open. He didn't even know why, really, there was just this vague sense of _closed in_ , of _trapped_ that had been steadily building ever since he woke and every time he closed his eyes he saw fire, saw mountain ash circles and cherry-red smiles and blonde hair, every time he took a breath his body tightened, reminded him what lonely felt like.

Like hospitals and insanity and cotton.

Like family too far away, too scared to ever visit.

And that line of thinking always led to Laura.

He _hated_ that line of thinking, needed the feeling to settle, needed to not be _caged_ in any fashion.

So the window was open. All of them were, and all of the doors, all of the cupboards and all of the curtains. He'd even taken the metal grille off of the air-vent. He felt... somewhat better.

Derek was looking at him like he was crazy.

"Hey," he said with a shrug, "at least I'm not killing anyone."

His nephew's eyebrows rose, but there was something like amusement in his eyes.

A flurry of movement catches his eye, catches both of their attention, white wings flexing against a blue sky and a little bird suddenly dive-bombing into their kitchen. It comes with a familiar hummingbird heart, a scent like flowers and lemons and blood and sweat, the kind of dirt that you would find a tomb, and there he is. Because no sooner has he landed, no sooner has Derek opened his mouth with a confused curse, than the little thing is changing.

Beak to mouth, talons to feet, feathers to skin, the only thing he keeps are his wings, but they grow with him, become vast enough to take up the whole room, occupy every empty space. They are immaculate.

Stiles sways, his hair is longer, just as white as his feathers, his naked skin covered in a sheen of sweat, too skinny, too pale, and with an unhealthy, fevered flush to his cheeks.

" _Stiles_?" Derek chokes, rushing to him as the boy topples over, panting, wings flapping a little like they're trying to catch his fall.

Stiles wraps a hand around Derek's as soon as he gets close enough, winds their fingers together. His eyes are glassy, keep flashing convulsively from human to animal and back again. "Beacon Hills First National Bank," he gasps out, heaving in air like an asthmatic, his lungs rasping, "that's where they are. You have to- it'll be bad, when the Alphas realize I'm not there. You have to save them, please, Derek, _please_."

Derek's mouth moves, opens and closes a few times, before he nods in understanding, and Stiles lets his hand go, presses his fingertips to the man's shoulder, pushes.

"Go. Go save them."

Derek swallows, nods again, and looks over at Peter, eyes flashing red, an obvious order.

"I'll stay with him," Peter says, already having walked over to kneel by the boy, "and I'll call the sheriff, we'll be okay here. Go save your Betas, and Derek," he calls out when his nephew moves to go, the Alpha pauses, "don't get yourself killed."

A wan sort of smile, another nod, and then he's gone.

There are tears gathered in Stiles' lashes, and his lips, his body, his wings, they _tremble_. "You're safe, little one. I've got you now," Peter says, brushing salt-water from his burning cheeks and picking him up. He feels like the embodiment of fire when he curls himself around Peter's shoulders, into the arms that carry him, wings mantle them both and make it hard to see.

"Don't let go," Stiles pleads.

And Peter knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he won't.

* * *

Stiles sits under the cold spray, his wings fluffed out behind him, with a sigh of relief. The fever had been magma in his veins, boiling his mind fuzzy and his vision blurry, but the freeze soaks in, curls up in his heated bones and feels _good_. One arm dangles over the edge of the tub, hand grasped onto Peter's, because he _needs_ that, or else he'll float away. The point of contact the only thing keeping him from drowning, his soul from getting rinsed down the drain like the blood and sweat and tears being sloughed off of his skin.

Peter shifts and fear rides a spark of adrenaline up his spine, has him tightening his grip. "I'm not leaving," Peter reassures him quickly, "just getting my phone. I did tell Derek I'd call your father, and if this fever doesn't go down I might have to call Deaton."

"No. I don't- my wings, I don't. I don't trust Deaton, don't want him to know."

Peter frowns with worry, brushing the back of his free hand over Stiles' forehead, he leans into the touch, the tingle-comfort it leaves in its wake. It's good to be touched like this, without intent to hurt, violate, destroy thoughtlessly. "Okay," the man says softly, squeezing his hand, "it does seem to be getting better on its own, anyway."

Stiles closes his eyes, turns his face up to the shower, ice-cold water pelting against his body, his wings. He hears cloth rustle, a number being dialed, and then he remembers.

_Hecatolite._

He knows, or, at least, he thinks it's pretty safe to assume, that his father got let in on the supernatural secret the moment Stiles went missing. And he's long since discovered what Hecatolite is, Cora told him, just like the Alphas accidentally let slip that they had an Emissary (someone who can wield mountain ash), that they were gunning for Derek (brand new, fuck up, child, but it's the name they cling to- _Hale_ ), that having three would be better than having two (more to kill, more to _be_ killed)- very, very suddenly, it clicks:

_It's a trap._

* * *

Cora hides Erica behind her when Ennis opens the door into the vault. Erica is not scared, Erica is loud-mouthed benediction and she _knows_ , that Stiles will bring Derek back with him, she _knows_ that there is light at the end of this tunnel, that their suffering _stops_ today. Cora is with her in this, she has faith in their Pack-mate, their friend, her brother, but she knows what cruelty feels like, she knows gut-clench terror and the despondency of time when you are under the power of another.

Boyd did too.

Cora doesn't think her moon-sister weak, she doesn't think that a day underneath one of these men, boys, woman, will break her. But it will change her, it will take her clay and make it just that little bit harder and Cora- she doesn't want that. Because this girl next to her is _sweet_ , shaky-strong, all insecure foundation, but she still has smooth edges. Cora is jagged and jaded.

If someone other than Stiles is to suffer for a day while he gathers up the cavalry that will break them out of this godforsaken cage, it will be her.

Erica clenches a hand around her forearm and _breathes_.

Ennis' eyes are red as he scans the place and finds no snarky haunted pale boy. She almost wants to laugh. _They_ gave him wings. Did they really, _really_ not expect him to fly?

"Where is he?!" The hulking man roars, and she bares her teeth at him with a growl.

"Not. Here."

He grinds a howl out of his throat that sounds more saw-dust rage than wolf, and Cora thinks the moon would be disappointed by it. She herself is as unimpressed. He follows it up with a backhand to her face and she grunts at the pain, but that's all he does before he's leaving them, door clanking shut behind him.

Erica pulls her face close to inspect it, and hisses at the wound, the bloody fountain her aching nose has become. "I think he broke it."

"Yeah," she sighs wearily, groaning in pain when Erica takes the bridge of her nose in between her thumb and the knuckle of her finger, cartilage crunching as she sets it back into place.

"Sorry," the girl winces sympathetically, "it would've been worse to let it heal like that."

"You're _right_ , but, _ow!_ " Cora presses a finger to the soft, bruised flesh, inspecting, and shudders when it sends a low-buzz of pain down her spine. "Fuck, that hurts."

For a while after that, _nothing_ happens. They hear Ennis and Kali arguing, but then it's just... _silence_. And that's, that's fucking disconcerting, because the Alpha's have always been routine, sedentary in everything but their torture. She knows that Stiles being gone is a huge alteration, a fuck-up that they're going to have to fix, but, somehow, she never imagined they'd freak out quite this much, to leave them alone entirely in their panic.

Her muscles tense when she hears the disquieting sound of dissonant sand, pouring out around their prison, paired with the clicking sound of heels against marble. Erica flinches awake in her lap and gulps in a deep breath that has her face morphing into horror, and Cora understands, because she can smell it too. Sage and atmosphere and perfume, underneath that, _mountain ash_.

But there's no _reason_ for them to be- unless they're trying to keep other wolves out? Only that doesn't make sense either, because the barrier stops just sort of closing, and then just _stays_ that way. She can't hear any other heartbeats, and the perfume-atmosphere smell suddenly _vanishes_ , just as the effects of the Hecatolite- which she couldn't notice before, so gradual, just a weight, a pressure, a slow deterioration of power- fucking _evaporates_ all at once.

Her breath hitches as the wolf inside her surges, presses up against her skin, begging for mother-moon and rain and grass and earth, for freedom, for _violence_ , a howl blooming in her throat.

Erica shivers on the tail-end of an animalistic snarl, her claws creeping out, fangs descending.

Their _only_ saving grace right now, the only thing letting them keep even a _shred_ of their humanity, is the fact that it's the sun, not the moon, riding high in the sky. But it won't stay that way for long. The sun always sets.

"It's a trap," Erica breathes, horrified, "isn't it?"

Cora looks down at the chains winding around them, manacles that keep them in place, more for show than anything. She knows breaking them _now_ , with this surge of unrelenting power, would be easy, and, she thinks, they probably knew that. Their plan wasn't so half-baked as this. But they're playing fast and loose, because Stiles made them have to proceed early.

And they're making _mistakes_.

"Yes," Cora agrees. "But we won't let them use us as weapons so easily."

Erica looks up at her, heartbeat and breath speeding with anxiety, anticipation, adrenaline, it underlines her scent with the kind of spice that makes Cora's mouth water. The girl's face sets in stubborn, grim determination.

"What do we do?"

Cora grins, all teeth, and breaks their fucking chains.

* * *

By the time Scott and Derek find them, Cora and Erica have forced the vault door open, empowered by the vitality of the moon coursing through them, have forced Marin Morell to trap them both within their own, personal, mountain ash circles, and torn out her motherfucking throat. No mercy for the woman who helped them get tortured, watched them get mutilated, deigned to _help_ the monsters, she deserved to be slaughtered.

Cora doesn't know what this will mean for them, how long after the moonrise will they be all howls and maw and snap-bite, how long will the induced feral state of their wolves stay? Just tonight? Or will they _never_ be the same?

Either way, they'll first have to _survive_ , because even if the ash will keep them in, keep them from her brother, keep them from each other, it won't keep them from _themselves_. Some wild animals, when caught in traps, chew their own limbs off, just to get out.

She is breathless when she sees him, three boys and two girls behind him, eyes that same hazel mom wore in her irises, shoulders as broad as dad's, lips and nose like their grandfather, like Laura, like Philip. He is an amalgamation of family collected in one singular body, and it makes her _ache_ , because they _told_ her he was alive, she followed the scent of rumors here to _find him_. But it's different, to _see_ it.

He takes in the room, the mountain ash surrounding them, the mutilated body on the floor, Erica, and then her. His breath catches, his heartbeat stutters, and she wonders exactly what he sees, their mother's eyes mirrored in their own? Laura's hands? Their father's mouth, chin, cheekbones?

The blood dripping from her lips?

The hunger in the hollow of her stomach?

"Cora?" He breathes, faint and questioning and devastated.

"Yeah, big brother, it's me," she tells him, watery wobble in her voice, and she nearly sobs when a high, keening, animal whine escapes him.

Scott, and she knows it's Scott because of the stories Stiles has told them, because of the uneven jawline and the warmth of his skin and the light in his deep brown eyes, looks a little discomfited by the display of raw, unhindered emotion, but collects himself enough to say, "Allison, can you- someone should break the-"

"No!" Cora cries out, eyes never leaving her brother. His eyes flash Alpha-red and he makes a wounded noise that lilts up at the end like a question.

"Hecatolite," Erica explains, her voice seared desperate at the edges, the animal in her wanting to please their Alpha, "we don't know if it was in the walls, or the foundation, but that-" she points at the Druid- "lady, she- she turned it off, we- as soon as the sun goes down-" she whimpers, then snarls, then catches herself and whimpers again. Cora can smell the blood from here, wonders if she's digging her claws into her palms to try and control herself.

"It was a trap, _we_ were a trap," she says, Derek makes a frustrated whining sort of growl, and she bares her throat without even thinking about it, unable to stop herself. Derek's growl turns into a soft sad sound before cutting off entirely, becoming silence. "She was going to trap you in here with us, but their plan got fucked up by Stiles, she dampened the effects of the Hecatolite too early, and we were able to get free, force her to trap us."

"And then you killed her," Scott says, vaguely accusatory.

There's a glare and a note of sarcasm in Erica's voice when she responds, "Yes. Yes, we killed the woman who wanted us to kill _you_. Yes, we killed the woman who helped the Alpha Pack, who allowed them to torture us, _Stiles_ , without batting an eye. _Yes_ , we fucking killed her."

"What happens," the strawberry blonde- Lydia, the genius who Stiles has been in love with for years, she almost smiles at the memory- begins to ask, her eyes trained on the little window that Stiles had flown out of hours ago, "when the sun goes down?"

"Hecatolite scatters moonlight," Cora explains, "we haven't been able to feel the moon for- for however long we've been here. It's- it'll be too much, I can already feel it and it's not even moonrise yet." She shakes her head, takes a deep breath. "We'll go feral."

"Which is why trapping us in here with you could've killed us," she concludes, "too much power, too wild, combined with the fact that none of us would actually want to _hurt_ you, while neither of you would have that same pretense."

"Exactly."

"But, if you can't attack _us_ ," the tall one with dreamy eyes and ridiculously curly hair says slowly, "and you can't _escape_..."

"There is a chance they could severely damage themselves," Lydia finishes, and Cora nods in agreement.

"No," Derek bites out. "No, we can-"

"It's okay, Alpha," she says with a small, sad smile, then she turns to Erica, sees the same glimmer of hope and resolve in her eyes. "All we need to do, is survive the night. We'll be okay, I promise."

Derek and Scott both look like they're about to protest when a new voice, dramatic in its reveal, drawls out, "While that's a pretty sentiment, I highly doubt _any_ of you will survive the night."

Deucalion, she's _sure_. She never got to see him, but his glasses, his cane, his stature, all things Stiles told them about while he was panting and writhing and spitting fucking _blood_ through the pain of his steadily regrowing wings.

Kali saunters up to his side with a fanged grin, "Except maybe Derek, but even then, it's a coin toss."

Deucalion sighs, like he's severely disappointed, "I wanted you in my Pack, Hale, but you just had to go and let your Betas kill my Emissary."

The twins pipe up behind him, eerily in synch, "We _liked_ her."

The rumbles of growling wolves thunder throughout the vault, and the waning light of the sun glints off of gleaming fangs, muscles tense, weapons and claws are drawn, a battle erupts.

Erica looks at her worriedly, presses a small, dainty hand against the side of her barrier, like she's reaching out. Cora gives her a fleeting smile, licks lips that are desert-dry and cracking like breaking clay, pushes her palm against the side of her own barrier, and closes her eyes against the infiltrating sounds of battle as the moon takes her.

* * *

A gunshot rings out, and the mountain of twin werewolf combined on top of him thuds to the ground with little more than a trembling sigh. Their death does not separate them, twisted too-big limbs covered in blood, morphed muscle soft with death, but the giant stays, and Derek is sure he will never see the twins again.

He climbs up, out of his wounded position, to see who the shooter was, and marvels at the sheriff standing there. He is not a presence of fear, or even strength, he looks bone-weary tired, no adrenaline rush, just the simple protection of a steady hand and an accurate aim, steadfast, lips thinned into a frown.

"You alright, son?" He asks, as behind him Chris Argent shoots Kali down with the help of his daughter, who leaps for him with a cry of praise and familiarity and triumph. John leans down to grasp his forearm with his hand, helping him up, ignoring the blood for the most part.

"How did you-?"

"Stiles," John answers with a wry grin and a shake of his head, "he sounded a little out of it, said something about it being a trap, begged me to come here instead of going to see him, said he was okay but he _wouldn't_ be if I let his friends die." He shrugs, nods to Chris, "Told me to bring wolfsbane, so I decided to bring him, too."

Derek almost laughs as it hits him, that Stiles, barely able to stand, barely able to breathe, confined and tortured for _months_ , managed to save his life. _Again_.

Deucalion growls, howls a terrifying, maddened sort of thing as his bones start to crack, shift, his skin starts to darken, but the change doesn't get completed, because _Lydia_ , of _all people_ , with one of Allison's ring-daggers in hand, stabs him through the back of the skull.

His roar stutters to a halt, clangs in his throat like the discarded violence it is, like coins tossed out across metal, and then he falls at her feet, silence where his heartbeat used to be. She looks down at him with utter disgust in her clever eyes, the pout of her lip set in an uninterested frown.

"Well," she finally says, looking down at her blood-soaked clothes, her ruined shoes, "I am _definitely_ going to need to go shopping tomorrow."

"I will buy you _whatever_ you want," Jackson smirks, going over to her and pulling her into a filthy kiss, "that was the hottest thing I've ever seen you do."

She raises her eyebrows at this, before cracking a genuinely pleased smile at the praise, while Scott huffs something appalled about _murdering_ people, and John shoots the boy a glare.

"These _people_ had my son for _three and a half months_, Scott. You should just be happy I let it be _quick_."

Scott frowns, ashamed and chagrined and still just a little bit upset by the turn of events, but looks down at his shoes, subsiding.

Then, the sounds of snarling capture their attention, the two she-wolves trapped in mountain ash clawing and snapping and growling at their barriers, digging at themselves when they get too frustrated. There is no humanity in their actions or their golden-glow eyes, it's all animal.

"What," John says slowly, "the hell?"

* * *

Derek sits quietly against the wall, it smells like blood and pain and _terror_ here, like Stiles and Erica and Cora, very, very faintly, like Boyd. Like Pack and bravery. He tries to tune out the horrible, vicious sounds his sister and Beta are making, listening instead to the others breathing, heartbeats, rustling cloth, occasional swallow.

John has already gone, he couldn't put off seeing his son any longer, and he trusted Derek to take care of his Pack in the aftermath. Allison and Chris got rid of the bodies before going home, hunters have no place amongst rabid wolves, even trapped ones, whatever their excuses may have been. He hadn't been listening. Scott had gone with them.

Isaac, Lydia, and Jackson stayed. Isaac and Jackson sitting on either side of him, Lydia curled up into Jackson's side, all of them watching the two she-wolves ride out the night on some wild-high. Their faces are blank, emotions hidden, but he can feel the solidarity of Pack within them.

"Where's Boyd?" Isaac finally asks, breaking into the toneless sounds of visceral ferocity the girls are making across the room.

"He's dead," Lydia says with her usual brutal honesty, though her tone is somewhat kind, "obviously."

Isaac makes a low sound, mournful, and then quiets.

* * *

Cora awakens, the power all but entirely drained out of her, self-inflicted wounds already mostly healed, sun creeping a soft sort of warmth into her body. Her eyes open to the sight of her brother, her Alpha, Lydia and crew-cut and curly, her Pack. She swallows convulsively against her dry throat, sits up slowly with a little gasp when all of her wounds scream their complaints at her, looks over to see Erica getting up the same with a grimace painted across her pretty lips.

"We made it," the other girl breathes in awe, and Cora smiles at her.

"Yeah," she says, "we did."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lydia be an ice-queen, lol
> 
> Also, some of you may be wondering why the title of this fic isn't exactly grammatically accurate- I did that on purpose, don't judge my creative license!! Lol, or actually, judge it all you want, hahahaha
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! xxx


	3. For Home, Hope, And Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100 kudos!! Squee!!
> 
> You guys, you guys are amazing! Muah!!!
> 
> Trigger Warning: Reference to child abuse.

He was curled up into Peter's side on the couch, half asleep and clothed in Derek's clothes, the fever evaporated like smoke, leaving health in its wake, but still he could not imagine getting up, or speaking, or doing much else beyond reading over Peter's shoulder and dozing.

He wonders if Derek will be upset that they cut into his shirts just so it could fit around his wings.

He wonders if his father got there in time.

His worries press against the wall of empty-nothing cheek-burn misery, tears sting his eyes, like he hasn't already had his fill of crying, but they don't fall, he's bled himself dry already. He nuzzles into the strong arm around his shoulders, closes his eyes gratefully when the words on the page become the words on Peter's lips and just _breathes_ for a while.

Peter's hand taps where it was absently soothing, he says, "Your father's here."

Stiles manages a smile, doesn't open his eyes until the loft's door opens, doesn't move even then.

"Hey, dad."

His dad's eyes widen comically at the sight of his wings, his hair, white as bone. "How'd that happen?" He asks faintly, jaw still dropped, and Stiles' smile feels a little bit more than skin-deep, now.

"One of the Alphas bit me," he shrugs one of his shoulders, lifting up a wing with the movement, "I got bird insteada wolf. Could've been worse."

"Yeah, at least you aren't a _lizard_. Jesus, kid."

"Is everyone okay?" Stiles asks as the sheriff walks over and plops down next to him on the couch like all of his strings have been cut. Stiles moves one of his wings to blanket the man while the other tightens against his back to make room for him, and his dad pats at the feathers tenderly, if a little dubiously. They'd already made their tearful reunion on the phone for the most part, but more than that, Stiles knows, his dad is _exhausted_ , frayed and wrung out.

For all the love those worn blue eyes are casting on him, all the gentle in weathered fingers that stroke his giant feathers, his dad is too half asleep to cry, and is falling _hard_ from an adreniline crash Stiles doesn't envy in the least. He may even be a little grateful for it- as much as he loves his father in turn, he doesn't think he could extract himself from Peter's side right now if he _tried_.

And, no, he isn't going to read too much into that. He's tired, too.

"Mostly. The girls are... _dealing_ with the Hecatolite. Derek said he'd text if they..." He makes a vague gesture with his hand, and Stiles leans further into Peter, closes his eyes.

"Sleep," he tells his father, flapping his wing a little to underline the statement. His dad laughs.

"Love you, son. Glad you're back. Even if you _are_ a bird," he slurs tiredly.

"A _were_ bird," Stiles corrects, sighing fondly. "Love you, too." Turning his face into Peter's neck, he pokes the man in the chest and murmurs, "Read."

Peter huffs, but does as he's told.

* * *

After Lydia's broken the mountain ash circles, and Erica and Cora squeeze the living daylights out of him, their Pack-bonds shimmering like pieces of broken glass on the beach, dangerously beautiful, they head home, or where home _is_ nowadays.

Isaac with him and the girls in the camaro, Jackson and Lydia in Jackson's car.

Cora sits passenger, asks excited questions and explains- not in detail- about some of the things that happened to them, to _Stiles_ in that place. She tells him about her travels some, begs explanations for all of the stories Stiles told her while they were imprisoned, cuffs him upside the head for most of his answers.

Erica manages weak laughter, Cora sits sideways so she can hold her hand, like being without that contact will make their gravity stop working, make the fragile smiles pulling at their lips crack and crumble and fall to the floor. Isaac leans into Erica's side as she talks about Boyd, that he'd left them, about how she never got the brunt of it because Boyd always took it, and that when Stiles came, Stiles stole the attention of everyone in the room, like he always does.

On purpose.

To keep them safe.

And acted like it was nothing.

He'd almost died when he'd been Bitten, but he'd survived it with wings instead of fangs, and with Cora's help, her memories of their mother, managed to achieve the full-shift. He'd saved their lives over and over and over again.

And Derek could tell, during their time there, Stiles had become more than Pack, more, even, than family, to them.

All he can think, as he brings his Betas, his _sister_ , up the stairs, is that he has so much to be _grateful_ to Stiles for, for another piece of his family, returned to him, for the lives of his Pack-mates, as unburdened as is possible for them to be, for their return, for the sheriff coming to their rescue, for all the other times he's saved their lives.

* * *

Stiles cracks open his eyes when he realizes Peter's stopped reading, his father snoring gently on the other side of him, the older werewolf smiling expectantly at the door. When Stiles looks over to it, it's already opening, revealing Cora and Erica with their arms looped around each other's waists, Derek beside them, Isaac, Lydia, and Jackson all bringing up the rear. Cora grins, despite all her tired, hungry, the way her clothes are all torn and soaked bloody, fist-pumps the air with a little cry of victory, and Stiles flies off of the couch with a laugh bubbling up his throat, launches himself into their arms with glee.

Cora and Erica fold their bodies around him, and he mantles them both with his wings, curls into them, breathes in familiar scents, although, now he's clean, it becomes obvious how _not_ clean _they_ are- he can't be bothered to care, though, his worries melting away at their touch, their presence.

"You did it, babe," Cora croons, "you got us out."

Stiles presses a kiss into her hair, "I am _so fucking glad_ you're safe."

"It's 'cause of you," Erica breathes, nuzzling into his shoulder. "Thank you, Stiles."

Pulling back from them and letting his wings slide off of their shoulders, he shakes his head, disbelieving, "I didn't do anything but sit here and worry."

Erica gawps at him, and Cora swats him on the shoulder, "Seriously? We wouldn't even be _alive_ if it weren't for you!"

He shakes his head again with a scoff, "I think you two are seriously overestimating me," he says, then, when they open their mouths to protest again, "and, anyway, you guys should shower, rest, you both deserve it."

They sigh, resigned, hug him again before Erica leads Cora the way of the bathroom.

Jackson's eyes rake over him, "You have _wings_ ," he eventually ends up saying, as if it needed to be clarified.

"I have a feeling that's gonna be a common reaction," Stiles says with a roll of his eyes before hauling the other teen, who makes a disgruntled noise of surprise, into a hug. "It's nice to see you again, Jackson."

Gruffly, the other boy responds in kind, thumping his back awkwardly before pulling away. Stiles beams at him, goes up to Isaac, holds up his arms in invitation, still remembering days when he flinched away from any and all contact. The boy rolls his eyes, gives him a warm, lovely sort of hug, ruffling his feather-white hair as he pulls away.

Lydia smirks at him when he looks to her, before throwing her arms around him in a comforting embrace, "I'm glad you're alive."

He laughs softly, wings fluttering with the simple joy that statement, from her, brings. Then he's turning to Derek, who's watching him with something like _vulnerable_ curling in his hazel eyes.

"Alpha Hale," he begins formally, voice cracking with _so many_ emotions. He'd rehearsed this in his head even before the Alpha Pack. He's pretty sure he started thinking about doing it directly after Gerard, he might've even started before then. "Will you do me the honor of accepting me into your Pack?"

Derek's eyes widen, irises flooding with a deep, dark, protective red. Then he rushes forward, hauls Stiles into his arms with a shuddering breath and murmurs, "Always. You already were, you _always_ were, Stiles, you don't even have to ask." The emotion, vehemence, fragility in the other man's voice, is startling, cuts deep, flays away dark pieces of his soul he'd thought to keep forever, warmth burrowing deep in his chest, settling, soothing.

He fists his hands in Derek's shirt, lets his head fall on the man's shoulder, and when the tears come as relief washes over him, as _everything_ he's been through crashes down upon him with bone-crushing weight, he doesn't stop them.

Lydia and Jackson decide to go home to change and clean _themselves_ up a bit, before returning. Stiles takes his Alpha by the hand and leads him, detouring to grab Peter, to the bed that, in this weird open-floored design of loft, is living room adjacent in a way that means he'll be able to see the door, keep an eye on his father (along with Isaac, who went to curl up next to the man), and sleep, hopefully.

He wraps arm, leg, wing around the two men, and sighs contentedly when they both, getting with the program, curl into him in turn.

One very long shower later, the two girls changing into whatever Derek has to spare, come down the spiral staircase to be greeted by the sight of them, and, unabashedly, crawl into the comfort of feathers and warm bodies and silk sheets.

He dreams of a hospital, of his mother, all face sunken hollow-eyed desperation. Her teeth would chatter as she'd call him terrible things, because in her mind, _he_ was the one who was killing her. Bite, nail, scratch, hope, pray, scream, because _'Why, mommy, why? Maybe she's right. Maybe if I'm better.'_

_'I can be better.'_

His body, all child small, eyes too big for his head, shakes out of its skin against the wall as he breathes, harsh, terrified.

A man enters the hospital room, all burns and scars and some kind of youth, and he asks, "Is this why you are the way you are?"

Stiles doesn't know what he means by that, is too terrified to answer, could dodge when his mother comes over on spindly legs to slap, hit, punch. Doesn't. Braces instead, waits for it to be over, for her to be heaving and exhausted. Leads her back to her hospital bed, helps her drink some water, wipes sweat from her brow, dotes on her like he means it because he doesn't _want_ her to die.

He's being a good boy, now, isn't he?

This way he won't kill her, surely.

"It is, isn't it?" The man, hospital gown, blue eyes aglow to reflect in the metal of her bedpan. He sounds upset, saddened, some other things Stiles just can't parse out.

"If I'm good," he says quietly, ignores the weight of his words, so _heavy_ , "I'll stop killing mommy."

"Oh, baby," breathes the burning man, as fire licks up his skin, coating him in its liquid heat, but it doesn't hurt when he slips his arms around Stiles' front, hugging him. It just feels warm. "You're not killing her."

Stiles' breath catches, his bottom lip wobbles. Tears wet his cheek and his mother sleeps.

* * *

They learn that, though Stiles was able to achieve the full-shift, he hasn't yet been able to go from the Beta-shift, back to fully human, and, so untrusting of Deaton, unwilling to go to the vet for help. Much more willing to do the research, find out exactly what he is, himself.

Stiles decides not to leave the loft after his initial night there, main reasons being that wings are hard to hide and they have nosy neighbors, he _needs_ to be close to Pack (read: Erica and Cora), and he feels _safe_ here. Besides, his father should feel better leaving for work knowing that Stiles is surrounded by a bunch of protective werewolves. He's right. His father also begins staying at the loft more often than not, utilizing one of the abandoned apartments downstairs.

Which is basically how the Stilinskis, unabashedly, move in.

Peter takes it upon himself to, along with Lydia, supplement the online classes Stiles ends up having to take, since going to school with _wings_ , is not exactly an option.

Through Isaac, who goes to Deaton claiming to be looking for one for _himself_ , which, considering his rough childhood was believable, Stiles finds a therapist _'in-the-know'_ willing to skype with him. He keeps his wings hidden for the first couple sessions until he's sure he can trust her, tells them all with a wan, wry smile, that he'd suffered torture for days on end, suffered more he wasn't particularly willing to state out loud- his mental health was in the dumps.

He'd actually convinced Isaac and Erica that Charlotte- his therapist- could be good for them as well.

Though going through the full-shift causes him to have a high fever after, and seems just a little different, dangerous, he ends up doing it a few times, both to fly- which he seems to quite enjoy- and to find out what exactly he is.

A White Raven.

Beautiful and rare with wings like spun ivory, cloud-soft, pure.

After three days or so, Allison visits, and Stiles hides his wings from her- she is there more for Isaac than she is him, but extends her friendship anyway. It's a strained thing, but the more she visits, cozier with Isaac and Lydia than anyone, the more comfortable he is around her.

It takes Scott a week longer.

Derek's listening to Stiles, who's rushing around the kitchen- shirtless, as he is so often these days, the cloth irritates his wings, no matter how they alter it to fit around them- and mumble humming some odd thing:

_Depression is the fucked up expression of repression in my mind. Seratonin- cute micro tribble on a leash- depression is the boot- micro tribble go squish._

It's not the first time Stiles has come up with a jive like this, Derek suspects it won't be the last. It's as bittersweet as it is endearing. The boy is making Gumbo, his mother's recipe, is always cooking with whatever free time granted to him between lessons and research and trying to learn how to shift back human, trying to learn control.

Stiles says he can't handle being stationary too long, Derek thinks part of it is that he needs to feel useful. He'd asked him if that's what it was once, and his reply had been a rueful smile and a pat on the cheek.

Cora and Erica are taking a nap upstairs in what is quickly becoming their bedroom, one Stiles often shares with them, though his relationship with the two girls is far more platonic than their relationship with each other; Isaac's on a date with Allison; Jackson and Lydia are watching The Notebook on the couch, snuggled up together, waiting for the food to be done; the Sheriff is at work; Peter's next to him at the table, reading instead of watching Stiles as he is.

There's an easy peace, a prelude to routine, a relief of safety, a scent of Pack. Comfort, hope, solidarity, home.

It's honestly the best Saturday he's experienced since the fire.

Then comes a heartbeat, familiar in that it is known, unfamiliar in that it's been a fucking _while_.

He'd heard it before Stiles and Jackson, both, but not before Erica and Cora, their hypervigilance since coming home all the more obvious as they stumble, half awake, half dressed, down the stairs. Stiles' senses are different from theirs, his hearing is heightened, but highly attuned to specific things, keener on bugs and shifts in the air than footsteps and heartbeats, it's his sight and taste that are greatest, his sense of touch, too, but that may have nothing at all to do with his change of species.

He hadn't been touched kindly there, despite his small reprieves with Cora and Erica and, before he died, Boyd. So, now, there were days when he flinched away from every touch like it was assaulting him, too oversensitized, and days when he leaned into every touch, drank in the warmth of it like a _starved_ man.

As the heartbeat gets closer, footsteps steadily guiding the person up toward the loft, the girls get more agitated, more awake, at the very bottom of the spiral staircase. Jackson, noticing, and finally hearing it himself, just scoffs.

"It's only McCall," he says, "chill."

That may get the desired reaction out of Cora and Erica, an inquisitive noise from Lydia, but Stiles' own heart stutters, body flinches to a full stop, scent sours with acridity, smoke.

Peter, who'd been entirely uninterested in the proceedings, jerked his head up, his book's discarded and he's already halfway out of his chair as he says, "Stiles?" Urgent, worried, they all are. "Are you alright?"

Stiles' wings flick in agitation, he spares a glance over his shoulder, a mixture of resigned sadness with a deep-weary sort of fear darkens his honeyed eyes, the sugar in them tempering his emotions none. He grimaces, a sound harsher than a sigh and softer than a groan of frustration passes his lips.

"I- I have no idea. He's supposed to be my friend, my brother, you know? But- it just..." He shrugs, turns off the stove, sets aside the vegetables he was cutting. "I'm going to go bind my wings," his voice sounds so small, defeated, and it says something, the trust Scott's lost, that Stiles feels the need to do that in order to face him.

Stiles pads over, about to retreat upstairs to do just that, but is stayed for a moment when Peter wraps his arms around him. The boy melts into the embrace with a sigh, and soon the she-wolves, Derek, Lydia, and even a grumbling Jackson are surrounding him, holding him. A support, a love, a warmth, that floods and erupts and overflows and leaves you breathless with how goddamned sweet it is.

"It'll be okay, babe," Cora murmurs, "we'll be here."

"Always," Erica says, solemn vow. The others echo her, and Stiles trembles against them, overwhelmed by the power of it. Soon enough, because for all that the loft is high up and the lift is _broken_ , Scott's ascent continues, they break apart, Stiles going to bind his wings as he'd said, all the girls flanking him.

"I know I've been a bully in the past," Jackson says sombrely, looking after Stiles with real concern in his eyes, "but I don't think I've ever made my friends feel like that."

"That may indeed be because of your friends," Peter tells him. "Stiles is in no way needy, but he does have abandonment issues, and his connection with Scott is, if you look at it objectively, very one-sided. Stiles is always the one looking after him, wearing himself down to nothing just to be seen as something of value so he won't be left behind. He does the same with us, he doesn't trust he's good enough to be wanted without going that far." Peter sighs, "Honestly, if it was just Scott's neglect that made him act in this way, I'd kill him, no hesitation."

Derek shifts, heads toward the door surreptitiously, wonders if he'd even stop him, then, wonders, if not _only_ Scott, who else contributed to Stiles' behavior?

* * *

The visit hadn't ended up being of much note, despite its preclude and apprehension. Scott had come looking for Allison, and was surprised, but pleased, to find Stiles instead. He'd come up with pretty excuses, that he'd been waiting for Stiles to show up back at school, that he'd gone to his house and he hadn't been there, that he couldn't have imagined him _here_ , so he hadn't checked for him here.

Which is funny, considering Stiles had spent the beginning and middle of his summer at the loft, all of his time and energy spent looking for Boyd and Erica. But Scott hadn't come calling for him then, either.

All was forgiven with a hug and an invite to dinner, which was shared in strained politeness. Scott didn't seem to notice.

Peter worries about it still, days later. Scott comes by more often now, and Stiles still hasn't reconciled much with it, still hides his wings from the other boy, though he can't hide his hair (Scott had asked about it once, and Stiles had said, "The Alphas did it." A lie that was enough of a truth not to be noticed, and one that carried enough weighted hurt not to be brought up again).

So, one morning, Stiles laid out on the floor of the loft with his wings unfurled and splayed wide on either side, eyes trained on the skylight, watching the sun's slow rise into the sky, Apollo reclaiming his throne- Peter says something.

For the dreams he's been having, the way the little bird has been acting, is well beyond worrying.

"I thought you were upset with him because you felt like he left you," Peter says softly, padding over to sit by the very tip of the boy's wing, careful not to touch, he has no idea what mood he's in today. "But it's more than that isn't it?"

"Yes," Stiles says, at length.

"Will you tell me?"

"Do you know what Kate did to Derek?" Stiles asks, seemingly apropos of nothing.

"I've had... my suspicions."

"So have I," Stiles smiles, but it seems heartbroken, sickly in the timid light that spills down, blankets him. He truly looks like an angel like this. "Though he's never said anything himself, the timing, some of the things she said-" he cuts himself off with a shrug.

Peter thinks on it a moment, before deciding to speak of Paige, of why, before Derek killed him and accepted the Alpha-spark, his eyes were blue. Peter doesn't deny or sugar-coat his involvement, he'd been... arrogant. He'd thought that by playing with Derek's insecurities he could have another wolf be made, one that would assuage Ennis his loss and therefore his need for revenge, and he _hadn't_ thought of the consequences. He was Talia's Left Hand, politically and strategically was how he protected his land and his Pack, it was his job to get his hands dirty for their sake, and it was a job he was perfectly comfortable in.

Ennis biting Paige would've been advantageous, a way to cut the legs off of a budding war before it started, and a way for Derek to have what he wanted- Peter did not go into it thinking he was doing a necessarily _good_ thing, and he admits that, but... he hadn't meant it to go _so wrong_ either.

After, Derek had been so grieved and morose, the usually obnoxious, loud-mouthed boyishness was lost, and it was horrifying, so much so that when it came back just the slightest bit, along with news of another girl, this one named _'Katie'_ , they didn't ask any questions. Even when he came home smelling of disinfectant and confusion, still smiling, though it didn't quite reach his eyes, even when, once, Peter saw still-healing _bruises_ wrapped around his neck like the snakes they were, they said nothing.

And their family burned for it.

"You know," Stiles says quietly, and Peter wonders, throat raw from confessions he'd thought long since buried amongst the graveyard of secrets under his tongue, caged by his teeth, how it ended up being _him_ confessing, "I think you should tell him what you told me."

"Why?" Peter asks in a croak, and he almost wants to laugh at how cowardly he must still be, that even the idea scares him.

"Because you both feel too much guilt for things that aren't your fault. And because I think he has no idea how much you truly love him. Peter... you're the last he has of his family, and he's the same to you. Tell him what you told me."

Peter swallows, gentling a hand over feathers, aligning ones that aren't in place, tugging at snags until they become smooth. Stiles shivers with a pleased sound caught in the back of his throat as his eyes flutter shut, and Peter smiles.

"I'll try."

* * *

A few weeks after his conversation with Peter, Derek comes to him with red-rimmed eyes and arms that feel as shiver-shake around him as his words do when they're breathed against his ear.

"Thank you."

Faithful benediction.

Stiles doesn't know if he deserves that, but he presses his small smile into Derek's shoulder, and wraps his arms around him in turn.

Later, when he found Peter riddled with deep gashes, bloodied and battered, the man looked up at him from where he was sitting on the floor and smiled with enough relief and gratitude to match his nephew's words, and for that, Stiles could do nothing but smile back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering _why_ he's a white raven? Honestly, the white wings and hair were an aesthetic/symbolism thing, and then there wasn't any bird other than raven I could go with, and it honestly just turned out like this? It has no _huge_ significance, it's just a thing.
> 
> Also note that the Hale men's convo did go over Laura and Peter's stint with insanity, which is part of the reason Derek reacted so violently.
> 
> I love you guys!!! Kisses!


	4. For Forgiveness And Brotherhood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: Scott Bashing, because, I mean, he kind of deserves it? Also, the _shortest_ chapter, lol- but the next one will be the longest, and the last, so forgive me?
> 
> Trigger Warning: Several references to rape, I know I said it before, but, seriously, turn away now if reading something like this will negatively affect your mental health.

It wasn't until months later that Peter, and everyone else, learned the true reason for Stiles' hesitance to repair he and Scott's relationship, despite the depression his longing wrought.

They're all sitting around the dining table, with the exception of John, who's at work, Jackson and Lydia, who are out on a date, and Isaac and Allison, who are avoiding being together in Scott's sight, still, even after all this time. Cora's in the living room playing on some handheld video-game that Peter doesn't understand, but is pleasantly violent. Scott had just been regaling Erica on some of the things to happen while she was away, for instance, what had happened with the Kanima and Gerard.

Derek looks discomfited, and Peter can't really blame him. Erica's listening absently as she watches Cora over Scott's shoulder with a love-dazed gaze. Or, she was, until Scott got to the part about Stiles barreling in with Lydia in tow to help save the day, then, she'd perked up with an astonished gasp.

"Oh my _god_ ," she breathes, "how? He shouldn't have even been able to _move_!"

Everyone turns to her horror-struck expression with confusion, but she doesn't seem to notice overly much.

"I mean, after everything he'd been through- I honestly didn't know if he was gonna make it. The Alphas were worse, _so much worse_ , but still!"

"Erica," Derek says haltingly, brows furrowed, "what are you talking about?"

She looks around at their dumbfounded faces, and her eyes bug out as some sort of realization dawns. "You mean you guys don't _know_?" Her voice is high with astonishment, and some unidentifiable sort of pain.

"No," comes Stiles' voice, in the arch between the dining area and the kitchen, leaning with his arms folded across his chest and one of his ankles crossing the other, strangely cat-like. Relaxed, but not so much that he couldn't spring like a tensed coil at a moments notice. "They didn't." His face is as blank and indifferent as the words are. His scent seems just as absent, too airy, like it isn't as real as it was nearly a second before.

"Know what?" Scott asks, confused, and Erica looks from him to Stiles and back again, full of trepidation and indecision.

"It's okay, Erica," he tells her.

The pout of Erica's lip trembles, and her chocolate eyes are too wide when she says, "Before the Alphas took us, Gerard did," and Scott nods, because they knew this already, "and he got Stiles, too."

That, however, none of them knew.

"You were tortured for hours," Erica's looking at Stiles with big, wet eyes, "and you went to save them but you didn't- _why_? And _how_ ," suddenly, cheeks flushed with anger, she turns on the rest of them, "could none of you _notice_?!"

"Because I didn't want them to," Stiles says quietly, not unkindly. "When I want to be, I am a very good liar."

"Why wouldn't you tell us you were hurt?" Derek asks, sounding no small amount of hurt himself.

"At the time, there were other things to deal with," Stiles smiles, wry. "Not just the Kanima, but I'd fully intended to go back for Erica and Boyd, only to find they were missing entirely, I thought to maybe tell you after we found them," Stiles shrugs, "but then I experienced torture at the hands of monsters who made Gerard Argent look like a pittance, and I didn't think it mattered anymore."

They all take this in quietly for a few moments before Scott says, slow and a little more than defeated, "Is this why our friendship's been so down in the dumps, dude? Because I didn't find you? _Either_ time?"

The young boy seems desperate to understand, at the very least.

Stiles looks at him with something weary in his mostly deadened eyes. His voice comes out like silken poison, "No, Scott. I understand that, and have long since forgiven it- the moment you met Allison I knew that being your priority was impossible, and, though it was _hard_ , I also knew that I had to let you go. Not all the way, just enough to let you live your life, I'd been hanging onto you, _clinging_ , for so long..."

He lifts himself off the arch-frame, lets his arms go to his side as he takes a few steps forward and glares down at Scott with such _fury_ that the wolf actually flinches back from it, "What I have a hard time _dealing_ with is the fact that you can come in here, act chummy with _my_ Pack, and have no _fucking clue_ what you _did_ to them! You _chose_ to work with Gerard, sure, you had a plan, but you didn't _tell_ anyone. You let that bastard sling verbal abuse at _my_ Alpha, and then you- you-" Stiles shudders, fury morphs into disgust.

"Do you have any idea," voice so low, a whisper, deadlier than any spider, and Scott's starting to look like the fly who, paralyzed, gets cut from the web only to fall helplessly into a woodchipper, "what _non-consensual_ is? Do you have any idea just how abhorrent your fucking actions were?"

Scott flinches like he's been struck, and Derek, for his part, looks nothing less than astonished and cracked open. Peter can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, mind buzzing, because, ah. This is what Stiles had been leading up to that day he'd convinced him to have a discussion with his nephew. And, of course this wasn't about his grievances with what Scott had done to _him_.

He is far too selfless for that, isn't he?

"I'm-" Scott stammers, shame a biting thing in his eyes, face pinched, "I'm sorry, man, I was just-"

"Fuck you," Stiles says coolly. "Fuck all of your excuses, you forced someone to do something they didn't want to achieve your own goals. I have been _raped_ -" and everyone reacts to that, is horrified and appalled by that because they _knew_ , but they _didn't_ \- "and you did something so _close_ to that without any sort of apology and what? It's okay because you got the bad guy? But you _didn't_. If he'd rejected the Bite fully, he wouldn't have been able to _run_ as he did. You gambled on the trust of someone I love," Derek inhales sharply with shock, "and you didn't even _win_."

With that, the boy walks away, stomping up the stairs, and, the creak of a window, the grunt of his shift, a flapping of wings later, all but Scott (and Cora, headphones in, blasting the sounds of whatever rampage she's committed herself to in-game) know that he's gone flying.

"I really fucked up," Scott says, cohesively, "didn't I?"

"Yes," Peter tells him, clapping him on the shoulder with one clawed hand. "Yes, you did."

* * *

Derek walks over to him, making some sort of confection out of sugar and fruit and flour, sits on the floor with his back against the fridge and watches awhile. He knows Stiles better now, his anger is not a thing he's witnessed much- it stays under, sleeping until it is needed and quiet-seethe even when it wakes. He does not throw tantrums as he used to, or as Derek thought he used to.

Sometimes Derek thinks what happened to him ripped away all of the masks he used to use to hide himself, but that may just be projecting. Then again, Derek's still hiding, he's not any better at it now.

"You love Scott," he says, because he feels that's a valid point to be made.

"Yes."

"But you're angry with him."

"Disappointed," Stiles amends, then admits, "and angry, too, I guess."

"For what he did to me."

Stiles looks away from dough and berry juices, looks at him with eyes that speak of mother-earth and so much nurture it could threaten, an overprotectiveness that promises never to soften any blow against those who could hurt her charges.

"He apologized," Derek says softly, looking up at him, breathless.

"Did you forgive him?"

"I don't know."

Stiles smiles like a moonlight flower blooms, rare and exceedingly delicate. He rinses his hands of flour and all else in the sink, sits next to Derek on the floor and wraps a wing around him, the soft fluff of it still so strong somehow, downy and steel. Rests his head upon Derek's shoulder, laces their fingers together and huffs a slow breath out.

"I love you," Stiles says, "you know that, right?"

Maybe. A part of him. But his doubt is bigger, louder, far more powerful, and, anyway, it's nice to hear it out loud.

"I love you, too."

* * *

The next time they all have dinner, Allison and Isaac join them, apparently no longer so worried about Scott's opinion, John joins them, too, and must've heard something about it from someone, because his steely gaze doesn't stop chastising Scott until Stiles and Erica wheel in with the food.

Stiles sits next to Scott, pats him on the shoulder and says, "You did good. Try to do better."

There's a glisten of tears in Scott's eyes when he nods and promises, "I will."

A few weeks later, Stiles stops hiding his wings from him, and Derek formally accepts a new Beta into his Pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kisssssseeeeesssssss!!!!! I hope you enjoyed :)
> 
> This chapter was mostly self-indulgent, though it did need to happen for plot's sake, it just, it made me feel _good_ inside to write it.


	5. For Joy & Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the fic earns its explicit rating ;)
> 
> Content Warning: Sexxxxxy times, lol; also this may be kind of... choppy? I tried to make it as _not-choppy_ as possible, but I'm still vaguely worried about it. I tried, anyway. Also, _longest_ chapter!!!

Stiles flirts, sometimes, with Derek and Peter, never anyone else.

He'll say something, snarky or ludicrous, Peter flashes some fang, he bats his lashes, and Peter laughs at the display, startled.

With Derek it's softer, but no less obvious for it. And at night he drags them both to Derek's bed, claims he can't sleep without their warmth ever since Cora and Erica moved out, got an apartment for themselves downtown.

Lydia doesn't buy it.

The three are still working on his control, on shifting him back to fully human, but it's been almost a year, and no one knows if he'll actually be able to make it. Lydia thinks it's psychological, as are many things, and though she doesn't know exactly what the block is, she's sure that the two he's come to trust most in order to protect _him_ , instead of the other way around, will be able to help him with it.

If only he'd let them in all the way.

So, she invites him out to the porch one day, it's the most privacy they can be afforded, and she knows he likes to stretch his wings out here when it's nighttime and no one can see him.

"You're in love," she says promptly, blunt. He stares at her, wide-eyed, blinks once, twice, before regaining his composure.

"Yes," he replies simply. She's surprised he's not lying, perhaps this will be easy.

"So, why haven't you done anything about it, yet? When you were in love with me you were shouting it from the rooftops every chance you could get."

"When I was in love with you, I hadn't been tortured twice over, yet," he points out, wry.

"Well," she says with a shrug, "that doesn't change how you feel about them."

"No," he agrees, "but it does change how I want to go about telling them. The three of us have all been through some... _terrible_ things, Lydia. Asking for a relationship from them will be hard, and- and I couldn't settle, you know? For just Derek, or just Peter. I love them both, and I don't want to lose either of them because I'm being selfish or greedy or going too fast."

He flaps his wings a little through a strong gust of wind, before deciding he's had enough with the fresh air and heading back inside.

She sighs, realizing she has her work cut out for her, and wondering despondently when she'd managed to become her Pack's designated Cupid- she's a _Banshee_ , she deals in _death_ not _love_!

Oh, well.

C'est la vie.

* * *

Stiles sets the gun down, it gleams in the little kitten licks of light that streak through the curtains, not daylight or streetlight or twilight. Peter's sitting somewhere in the distance, too far and too close.

"Do you know what you're doing?" He asks, and his voice dissipates in the air like smoke, everything about him speaks of ash and horror.

Stiles looks down at himself, naked, drops of blood bubble from his pores, he feels empty, cold.

"No."

"How are you doing it?" Peter asks, and the words get trapped in ice-cubes that thunk to the floor. Stiles pads over to one of them, the gun forgotten, and kneels before it, picks it up, paying no mind to how it freezes his fingers. Inside the block of ice, there's a colorful fish. It blinks at him.

"I don't know."

His blood melts the ice, and the fish slides slippery out of his hand, it's still flopping pathetically when Peter says, "Do you want to stop?"

The fish dies.

"No."

* * *

Lydia goes to Derek first, because she's seen how complicated his relationship with Peter is, that it's gotten healthier with Stiles around, but that he still _killed_ the older man (though he was insane and in need of it), she's seen longing in his eyes, for family and for love.

She knows, with his insecurities and the hardships he's endured, he will be the easiest and hardest to convince of this.

Besides, he's simply _easier_ to deal with than Peter, who slithered into her mind like a snake, and took of her what she values most. She has forgiven him this, mostly, after he apologized and broke their connection and claimed, earnestly, that he did not want death, that he did not want insanity, that he used her and he'd do it again in a heartbeat, but the how, without asking, without kindness, for that he was sorry. And she'd understood, couldn't begrudge him, but being near the man is still deeply unsettling.

She finds him, unsuspecting, one morning, and asks him to go shopping with her, under the pretense that his loft is still highly barren, for all that the Pack conjugates there often. It's easy to make him accept, whether he wants to or not, easier still to get Erica and Cora, who've noticed Stiles' longing gazes, to be in on this with her.

They decide to go to a local coffee shop first, taking a seat just outside where there are fewer people.

"So..." Erica starts, tactlessly, "How do you feel about Peter?"

Derek blinks in surprise, and the girls around him smirk.

* * *

Some pastries, tarts, crepes, pancakes, and _several_ coffees later, it's noon, and Derek looks dazed, a flush high on his cheeks.

"Now," she says, because all that talk does _not_ negate the loft's need for proper furniture, "let's go shopping."

Erica laughs, licking syrup and powdered sugar from her fingertips. There's a faint, manic gleam in Cora's eyes when she claps her brother's shoulder and hauls him out of his seat with a, "Hell yeah."

* * *

"Dreamsharing," Peter says, looking over the book Stiles tossed at him as the boy curls onto the couch next to him. "Where'd you get this?" It looks ancient, foreign, weathered, and _feels_... powerful.

"Deaton's," Stiles tells him simply, "I stole it."

"How?"

"Ravens can carry more than you'd think."

Peter remains silent as he flits through a few pages, "Spiritual connection... Sparks... A bond can be created in times of duress... This is interesting."

"And it hasn't stopped," Stiles murmurs into his shoulder sleepily, "guess what that means?"

Peter hums thoughtfully as he reaches around to card through Stiles' hair, letting him cuddle deeper into his side, lulled into a doze by what was probably a very long day.

"That we're still bonded?"

"That I'm still a Spark."

Peter blinks in surprise, looks down at honey eyes hooded with exhaustion, "You think so?"

"I think there are a few ways to find out," Stiles smiles, and Peter can't help but smile in turn. "And if I am, maybe we're going about getting me back to human in all the wrong ways- I might not work like a normal shifter does-"

"We already figured that out."

"And yet you haven't changed how you've been trying to get me to shift back."

"No," he admits, "I suppose we haven't."

* * *

Their raven sifts through the mountain ash in the bowl easily, picks up a handful, makes a circle like nothing, like the wings on his back have no meaning. And they don't, not to this at least.

"So," he says to the now trapped werewolves in the living room, all but Peter wearing faces of complete and utter shock, "turns out I'm _really_ not a werewolf."

"Might not even be a werebird," Lydia muses.

"But he can turn _into_ a bird!" Scott shouts, indignant and dumbfounded.

"Yeah, but the moon's never affected him, neither has Derek's Alpha voice, for that matter," Isaac points out, as Stiles moves to break the circle.

"And mom never got a fever when she went through the full-shift," Cora chimes in.

"So, what am I?" Stiles asks.

The group exchange looks, and Stiles laughs, "The guy who's gonna have to research in order to figure it the hell out, I'm guessing."

Scott offers a sympathetic smile, claps him on the shoulder, "Don't worry dude," he says, "we'll help you figure it out."

"I'll look through the Argent's bestiary," Allison promises with a decisive nod.

"And I'll look through the Hale's," Peter says, with a nod to Derek, who nods back approvingly.

* * *

Peter walks through the desert suffused with heat, it fills him, pours into his chest and curls up in his groin, pulses. His knees feel weak and his body aches with need, yet still he walks. His lungs are filled with sand, and his belly dried up, yearning, throat scratching with the claws of thirst.

"Water," he says, and it comes out like _please_.

"Why?" Asks the boy with brown hair and eyes of gold, his feather-tips drag through the sand precariously, his body is aflush with heat, naked, gorgeous. His dick is hard between his legs, the tip of it _wet_ with precome, and Peter licks his cracking lips.

"Thirsty," he answers, as he falls to his knees, laps at him, sucks his weeping head into his mouth, needy. Stiles moans, threads his fingers through Peter's hair. Another man, eyes like Eden, dark hair, marble skin covered in sand, chuckles darkly.

"Oh, Uncle," he rumbles, trailing fingertips down Peter's spine in a way that makes his whole body tingle, turn into a live wire, "you need only ask."

Peter shivers, wakes with a gasp, rutting helplessly into the mattress.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, dazedly, breath coming hard as he takes himself desperately in hand. He's so far gone already that it only takes three delicious tugs to get him off, and after he's cleaned himself off he rushes to the sink and starts guzzling water down until his terrifying thirst is quenched.

"Stiles," he breathes when he comes up for air, water dripping from his chin, then, with a startled and slightly hysterical laugh, " _Derek_."

He thinks he knows what this means. He just has no idea what to do with it.

* * *

It turns out, much to Lydia's delight, and Cora's for that matter, that Peter doesn't need much convincing at all, subtle or otherwise.

* * *

"Ugh," Scott groans, head thudding down on the pages of the book he'd been reading, "we aren't getting _anywhere_."

"It's only been a _week_ , Scott," Isaac chides, but the other teen is already shaking his head and making mournful noises.

"No," Lydia sighs, "no, he's right, we should've found something by now."

Allison makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, "What if you just... believe?" She asks Stiles.

"What?" He sounds entirely dubious, Lydia doesn't blame him.

"Well, that's how the mountain ash works, right?"

"Yeah," he draws out the word, dripping with skepticism.

"So," she flaps a hand at him tiredly, "try it."

His eyebrows raise, and she starts flapping both her hands at him, urging, Scott looking on with amused expectance. Rolling his eyes, Stiles huffs, rolls his shoulers, his wings fluttering behind him, and, for their sakes, concentrates.

A minute and a half later, his wings begin to shimmer, fade, his hair begins to darken, and Lydia silences all of their gasps of shock with a look, not wanting to distract him. When his eyes finally open again, they're glowing Beta-gold, but beyond that, and the scars he should have but doesn't, he looks completely and entirely... _human_.

He blinks at all of their stunned expressions, then over either shoulder, then makes a rather plaintive, petulant sound.

"You have _got_ to be _kidding_ me."

* * *

Thankfully it's summer already, so re-enrolling in public school will be rather easy, and since he took online classes and was tutored thoroughly by one Lydia Martin and Peter Hale, he thinks he's probably going to be ahead instead of behind.

Despite the fact that the original reason for the move/invasion into the loft was his wings, after living there for a year, and after falling in love with both of the Hale men, he really doesn't want to leave. His dad, who's lived half here, half home, and half at the station this whole time, seems to reluctantly understand, and tells him he's proud, but that he can't leave the house his wife lived in. Stiles understands, too.

Without the wings, there are many things he can now do, going _outside_ , for example, and wearing shirts _comfortably_ , but even without them his eyes still flash Beta-gold, his body still heals at an accelerated rate, some of his senses are still heightened. He can shift from human to Beta easily now, though the full-shift still comes with a fever, and he can bring out claws without bringing out his wings.

They still don't know what he is, but he's alive, and, really, that's all that matters.

* * *

For the first time in awhile, they have the loft to themselves. All the pups and various hangers-on are at their respective residences (Isaac sleeping over at Scott's), and Stiles and Derek just came home with enough groceries to make Peter think they possibly bought out the store.

A few hours later, stomachs full of some of the creamiest, richest risotto Peter's ever had the honor of savoring, they're all cuddling on the couch watching some obscure film that makes too much sense and not enough at all, and Stiles squirms. His scent, snowdrops and lemon rinds, gathers hints of spice, something sharp and deep enough to dive into.

"Stiles?" Peter murmurs questioningly, dragging his eyes away from the screen. The boy's head is resting on his lap, his legs tangled with Derek's, and he looks up with sparkling honey eyes, cheeks burning crimson, lips parted on a breath. He swallows.

"Stiles?" He whispers again, more uncertain this time, dragging his fingers through the boy's hair. Stiles shivers, and Derek looks over, curious.

"Kiss me?" Stiles' voice is small and yearning, and Peter smiles, soft, glancing at Derek who, a little more perplexed and awed by this, only manages the barest hints of a nod, though his scent, too, begins to fill with something musky, dark.

"Of course, baby," Peter says, and leans down to swallow Stiles' delicious smile. Stiles opens his mouth with a moaning gasp, and his hands come up to wrap around the back of Peter's neck as he writhes, Derek's hands spasming on his wayward legs.

"I want," Stiles says raggedly when they part for breath, "I want, _so much_ \- I've _dreamed_ -"

"I know," and the heat in his own voice surprises him, "I dreamed it with you."

Derek makes a sound, half frustrated tension, half primal lust, and Peter turns his head, snatches his nephew by the hair, kisses him fiercely into quiet. On their laps, Stiles shivers.

Derek's eyes are melting seaglass, blown with need, and Peter almost purrs upon the realization that _he_ put that look there, he and their raven, who, with a desperate whine, pulls Derek's mouth away to claim it as his own, and Peter can only smile.

They kiss like that for awhile, and touch, curious, full of heat, but even when they take it to the bed, Peter knows it can't go much further than this tonight, for either Stiles or Derek, it's too new, and too much, and sex for the two of them is... different, more terrifying, more of a blood-oath commitment, but he doesn't mind. Falling asleep in their arms, with the taste of them on his lips is enough, it's _more_ than enough.

* * *

Ennis.

It isn't exactly that they _forgot_ about him, they'd just been too distracted by the return of Stiles, Erica, and Cora to _think_ about him, the fact that he hadn't been there, despite being one of the main Alphas used to antagonize Derek. And, after, when they _did_ realize they were one body short, he'd already been long gone, so far as they knew.

Which is why it came as something of a surprise, when, Peter, Lydia, and Jackson, as they head back to the loft from some designer clothing store, get accosted by the man. He's half feral, even Alphas can go Omega, after long enough without a Pack, and especially if all of their Pack-bonds are ripped from them in such a way, Peter himself is evidence of that. With a growl, and a click of his teeth, Peter fights back, he and Jackson make short work of him, two members of a big, strong Pack, who know from training together how to fight side by side perfectly.

When they have him down, he laughs, gloats, tries to goad Peter into killing him for his power and... Peter doesn't want it. At all.

He _has_ his Alpha.

And he loves him.

"Lydia," he says, wiping the blood off of his forehead with his sleeve before it can obscure his vision. Damn, this was a nice shirt, too. "Would you do me the honors of killing this bastard?"

With a smile like cloudless skies, she takes the pistol out of her clutch and says, "Gladly."

* * *

Peter flashes ethereal blue eyes at his nephew after Lydia offers a detailed account of their experience, "I didn't kill him, Der," he breathes, still high from his own revelation, "I didn't even _want_ to."

Derek looks awe-struck for a moment, before he surges across the space between them and wraps a hand behind his neck, another around his waist, kissing him like there's hope and joy in the warmth of his mouth, like he can't even fathom stopping.

Lydia, for her part, rolls her eyes and hauls a faux-gagging Jackson away.

* * *

Peter rolls his hips down, groaning into Stiles' shoulder, feeling his aching hole fill with Derek's cock, grinding against his sweet spot, thrilling him. The tight flutter of Stiles around his own dick is almost too much to bear, the fluctuation of double sensation, and a hook in his gut bringing him closer and closer to completion.

Stiles' hips are snug against his, sweaty back flush with his chest, head bowed as he mewls with pleasure. Peter can see Derek watching them over the boy's shoulder, mouth opened on a whimpering gasp of their names, a suplication to the gods and all that is sane. Peter's thighs quiver as he pulls himself up, thrusts himself down on Derek, the movement causing Stiles to convulse with a whine.

He will never know if this rush of heat and lust and sex was brought on by his own overwhelming love for them tilting his world on its axis and upending him, or by the fact that he's proved beyond a shadow of a doubt now, to both of them, that he won't leave. For power, for something better, for _anything_. As Stiles braces himself on Derek's chest and fucks himself on Peter's cock with a desperate cry, Peter decides it doesn't matter.

"Harder," Stiles keens, "please, please." And Derek responds before Peter can, grabs Peter's hips and thrusts in as deep as he can, faster and more, heat welling inside of him like dragon's fire. He bites down on Stiles' shoulder to keep from crying out before bending him over, pushing his face into Derek's neck and using his body as leverage to grind down, thrust in, take the pleasure that's building within him, bring it higher until it's weaving stars in his eyes, making every muscle clench with anticipation.

Stiles whimpers, gasps, cups Derek's face with his hands and kisses him filthy, wet, biting, passion, and that's all Peter can take before he's plummeting over the edge, spilling into Stiles and clenching around Derek, milking him until he's coming, too, loud and unabashed, hands tightening with a hint of claws against Peter's hips. Stiles is the last domino to fall, but with Derek kissing him and Peter still thrusting through his aftershocks, Stiles comes soon after with a high, thready, primal sort of whine.

It takes him a long while to disentangle himself, climbing off of Derek and slipping out of Stiles to flop onto his back on the bed.

"Too far," Stiles murmurs, still curled up on top of Derek, reaching over to lace fingers with his.

"Too tired to move again," Peter proclaims, and Stiles giggles.

Derek rolls his eyes with a huff, slides an arm around Peter's shoulders and hauls him closer.

The room smells like sex and love, like Pack, like snowdrops and lemon-spice, loam, petrichor, musk, like meat and fire, _them_. Home. And he's suddenly so terrificaly glad he made that choice, the _right_ choice, with Ennis. Ambition for power, selfishness and ego, all pale in comparison to this, to how good this feels.

"Stiles," he says, and the boy hums, squeezes his hand, "I think you taught me how to fly."

Stiles blinks at him, a smile slowly blooming across his face, beatific, and Derek just cuddles them all closer with a huff of surprised laughter.

"Didn't know you were a romantic," Stiles breathes, "should've guessed though, with your reading selection."

Derek cracks up, and even Peter's grinning widely now, with bliss and mirth both. Stiles kisses his cheek, leans back to beam at him, and promptly falls asleep.

* * *

It starts with a whimsical kiss, or something like it, during a Pack meeting two months later, after the seed of trust Peter's planted has taken root and turned into a faithful garden. They're all there, and the wolves can smell it, most of them have gotten over it without even talking about it, but Scott's always shunned his abilities, too human in his sensabilities, and Allison and John just didn't know.

Stiles kisses Peter sound to shut up his snark, then smiles at him with a twinkle in his eyes, Peter's scowl couldn't maintain long in the face of it, and eventually he took the cue to shut his mouth, rolled his eyes, and let a genuine smile play it's way across his lips, unabated. The humans- and Scott- of the group were all eyes bulging flabberghasted surprise, but Stiles just, shameless, strolled right over to Derek and kissed him, too. Less for quiet, and more a plea for patience, before sauntering off to the kitchen to finish dinner.

John went after him, and as much as Lydia would _love_ to be a fly on the wall for that conversation, she was much more interested in this one, since Allison was turning bright red, and Scott almost purple.

"What the hell was that?"

"Huh?" Isaac looks up at his friend, still mildly distracted by the map in front of them all displaying the tri-fold sacrifices already made, files on the victims splayed out. He quickly becomes incredulous after taking in the look on Scott's face and realizing what caused it, "Dude. They smell totally mated, how did you not pick up on that?"

"Or just how totally in love they are?" Erica chirps.

Peter smirks unapologetically at the teen, "Does it bother you?"

"Well- But it's just- you're so _old_! And _both_ of you? How does that even work?"

Peter doesn't miss the chance to disturb Scott further, and with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes, he sweeps Derek into one of the hottest, most passionate kisses Lydia's ever seen. Their Alpha is blushing, panting, and dazed by the end of it.

"With _exceptional_ grace," Peter answers, licking his lips. Derek's eyes track the movement, and Scott shudders with disgust. Allison, blushing herself, giggles adorably, which has everyone else laughing at the ridiculousness of it all soon thereafter.

"Oh my god," Scott whinges, "I need soap. For my brain. I'm never gonna be able to unsee that."

They're all in hysterics by the time a chastened looking sheriff comes out with a smiling Stiles on his heels, both carrying copious amounts of food the others have to clear the table for. Despite Stiles' amazing culinary skills, the best part of the meal for her, by far, is how beautiful-happy Stiles seems sitting practically in both Hale men's laps.

She did well, she thinks, grinning as she asks someone to pass the salt.

* * *

Stiles runs, lets his wings unfurl behind him to jump up and soar. On the ground below, the Pack frolics, and Derek does something that makes Peter laugh, a rainbow of color fills the sky, colors his feathers, the red paints his lips and cheeks, and he melts, bubbling with joy, into the atmosphere.

When he wakes, both Derek and Peter wake with him, laughing, drunk on his dream, and curling into him with wide, amazed eyes.

The smile on his face a flower he'd thought long-since dead.

"I love you," he says, and Peter kisses him.

"I love you, too, baby," he says, as Derek presses his lips, curled into a grin, against his shoulder.

"I love both of you," their Alpha breathes, "with all that I am."

* * *

"I still don't exactly understand how this dreamsharing bond thing works," Stiles says one day over breakfast. "I don't know why I ended up with one with Peter, or how it ended up extending to Derek so easily, or even if it can go beyond _dreams_. None of the books have much, and I don't think it'll be any easier to find, considering everything I do researching _myself_ , I'm doing blind."

"At least with the Kanima," Derek begins, "we knew the _name_ of it... But it's not like it's doing any harm, is it? And, besides, I like sharing your dreams."

"Even when I have nightmares?" Stiles asks, self-depricating wry, and Derek leans over to take Stiles' hand in his, kissing his knuckles.

"Especially then," he answers, soft, and sincere.

"But it's still frustrating, isn't it?" Peter muses, gentle, "Not knowing."

Stiles sighs, nodding.

"We'll figure it out, baby," Peter reassures him, kissing his temple and ruffling his hair.

"Yeah," Stiles mumbles, but he sounds a little dejected.

* * *

Ms. Blake is a rather unassuming teacher, Stiles thinks, settling in for class, Scott and Cora on either side, Erica beside Cora and Allison and Isaac up front. Lyds, and Jackson have a separate class this period, and Stiles feels kind of bad for them, school is much more comfortable when you're surrounded by Pack.

As class goes on, Stiles feels more, and more... drowsiness tugs at him, begs his eyelids down, makes the lilt of Ms. Blake's voice a lullaby, and swallows him in a blanket of darkness.

She is of scars and drag, her feet don't quite hit the sidewalk right, they look like they've been mauled by a tiger, but still she walks. He watches her, feels made of glass, his cheeks covered in glitter, his freckles like emboldened suns.

"M'lady," he says, and she grunts at him.

The sidewalk suddenly turns to dust, and his body changes swiftly, becomes bird, he begs at her, "You'll die, you'll die, come with me!"

And she snarls, lashes out. It is only then, when he sees insanity glittering in her eyes like the blood of all those she wishes to eviscerate, descimate, and _destroy_ , that he is truly afraid of her. Mince-meat body begins to drown in desert as he takes wing, flexes stubbornly against the ocean-sky, drowns in it, doesn't want to know fear again.

A swan, all battered from the scourge of war, with wings all hollow bone instead of feather, lifts up beside him, and sings a battle cry, before diving for his fragile body, fully intending for him to die.

He fights her, he tries, begins to cry out for something, off in the distance, a freedom from this he can almost-"iles! Stiles, wake up, man," Scott's saying, shaking him lightly, "class is over."

"Oh," Stiles blinks, smacks his lips, and Scott laughs at him good naturedly.

"Uppity, up, up, up, babe," Cora calls, already heading out the door, "I'm not gonna be late for you!"

Stiles snorts, shakes his head like that'll shake off the oddly disturbing dream, and gathers his things. "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

* * *

Stiles drums his fingers against the table as he reads, leg bouncing, an odd pull on his fingertips from where he bit the nail down to the nub earlier today, skin too raw for his agitation.

"Mushayarê!" Peter calls triumphantly, startling Stiles away from a sentence to his lover's enthusiastic smile as the man thuds an open book down onto the table. "Or, a very specific kind of Shaman, but a Shaman nonetheless."

"A what now?" Stiles inquires, confused.

"You're a Shaman, baby," Peter grins, and Stiles laughs, jumping out of his chair and literally sprint-crawling across the table to jump into his arms.

"You found it!" Stiles laughs with glee, "Holy shit!" And then he's kissing him, fierce and proud and excited, as Derek comes around to kiss them both on the cheek and check over the book with a small huff of appreciation and wonder.

"This is... it's pretty much you to a T."

Stiles makes a giddy noise Which Peter swallows, before disentangling from him, giving Derek a long, sweet kiss on the mouth that his lover hums into, pleased, before promptly, to both of the Hale men's amusement, getting absorbed into the book.

* * *

_A Mushayarê (aka - Dream Shaman, subclass of Shamanism based in Dreams rather than spirits or medicines. Sometimes called Dreamwalker, Gatekeeper)..._

_...is someone capable of creating bonds with people they love in the most intimate ways (violent, romantic, sexual). They can walk through The Dreaming, and have relationships there, can even touch upon someone else's dreams if they are so inclined. Untrained, this may be very dangerous and traumatic, for the Dreaming is a soft place, where everything, specifically the mind and the soul, is far more fragile, and vulnerable._

_It is possible for them to shift into the form of their spirit animal in the waking world as well as in Dreaming, though it will be harder to endure physically, as it is not a natural shifting process, for Mushayarê are not inherently shifters. It would be much easier for them to find a familiar, and ask permission for a soul-share, a meditative state that allows the Mushayarê to temporarily possess their familiar..._

_... Beware looking into the eyes of another, for soul-gazing comes easily to Shamans of all kinds, and a door stepped through one direction, can, in turn, be stepped through in the other._

_Being untrained, especially if they're more significantly powerful, can pose several dangers..._

* * *

He flies to the gate and sits atop it, it is made of bone and hair and blood tied together with hardship and twilighte and writhe. Next to him, another raven sits, with darker feathers.

A woman comes to the gate, and she looks dazed, sallow, white dress accentuating the bruises she is covered in, the swell of her belly. She doesn't look scared but Stiles has a feeling she should be. She presses a hand to the gate and makes a distressed noise.

"Can't we let her in?" He asks his companion.

"No."

"Why not?"

"She did not speak to the grandmothers on the rockingchairs, her ancestors, or the Old Gods. She does not have permission to enter here."

"... Can't we help her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because she is unwilling to help herself, to wake up to herself, to even _ask_ for help. Because she is under a powerful spell. But we can grant her child a boon, and hope he finds safety before she drags him into her hell."

And then they sing, a song of power and awakening.

The woman, the mother, she presses a hand to her belly and feels her child come alive. She smiles, but she does not say thank you before she goes.

Another comes, bare feet on glass, they look like a Gypsy child, and they have a cat, both of them painted in midnight. The child bows to the ravens, the cat does not, their auras flare with the voices of their deceased, and the gates creak open wearily, closing behind them with a sound like a rusted smile, all sugar.

Then comes the third, marred lady he's seen before, though he doesn't know her name. She comes dragging a soul behind her, and she throws its blood and bones and gasping moans at the gate which clangs, clatters with death echoes. Then she screams, hisses at the ravens and scratches at the gate, all wild animal, primal, feral, hate.

"We can't let her in."

"We can," the other raven corrects, "when she's earned it."

"And when will she earn it?" Stiles asks, as the woman walks, heated and crazed, away. Her victim stands, sways, transforms into dust and cobwebs and mice, the latter of which scurry away.

"When she has completed the Five-Fold Knot."

Stiles very suddenly wakes with the sound of Lydia's screams crawling into his ears like live bees, buzzing, he looks down at the book he'd been reading, mutters a curse and _knows_.

Another death, another sacrifice, and he's pretty damn sure he just accidentally accessed the Dreaming.

* * *

"If the world were to end tomorrow," Stiles asks one night, not long after the fourth sacrifice, "how would you spend today?"

Peter smiles at him over Derek's shoulder and says, "Pretty much the same."

"I might go to the convenience store," Derek decides after a moment, "get some ice cream."

"Ice cream?" Stiles laughs, and Derek shrugs unapologetically, "You know what, that actually sounds good."

"Is the world actually ending?"

"Don't think so," Stiles murmurs.

"Then I'm not moving."

Stiles laughs, slides away from their bodies, leans down to kiss Derek's shoulder, Peter's cheek, asks, "What kind of ice cream do you want?"

* * *

"Wow," Isaac says in awe of the contents of their freezer. It's full, compact, with various cartons of differently flavored ice cream, and there are still five or so cartons opened on the table, being eaten from.

"Peter told me to surprise him," Stiles chirps from his place in Derek's lap with a smug twinkle in his eye as he scoops a spoonful of strawberry cheesecake ice cream into his mouth.

"And you did indeed rise to the challenge," Peter huffs, offering the rest of his rum raisin to Isaac who declines in favor of the plain vanilla Derek had been working on.

"So," Isaac sighs, looking over the current research on the table, and wondering how the three of them are managing to keep the sticky sweet cream from staining any of the ancient pages. "Five-fold knot."

"Yep," Stiles says, popping the p, and tapping a marginally clean finger on a book proudly proclaiming itself: _Druids: Light And Dark_.

"We need to call a Pack meeting," Derek decides, tightening one arm around Stiles as the other reaches around to find the pocket his phone is sleeping in.

"It's three in the morning," Isaac tells him, only slightly incredulous.

"We've called Pack meetings earlier for less," Peter points out, and Isaac shrugs, enjoying his ice cream as he sits back and waits for the text to go out.

* * *

"So we're dealing with a Darach?" Cora asks, all pjs and sleep-mussed hair.

"Apparently, which also means these sacrifices are just the beginning, and if we don't find them soon, the power they will have accrued may be too much for us to handle," Lydia says, prim and proper despite the time.

"Well, can't Stiles just _dream_ ," Scott wiggles his fingers mystically, "at them, and then tell us who they are?"

Stiles rolls his eyes, before actually thinking about it and making a face, "Actually, I'm pretty sure I already have- I mean, it's hard to explain, but I also think they don't look how they looked in the Dreaming here in the waking world. Whether that's because of my subconscious or a- a glamour or something? I have no idea."

"Well," Allison puts in, finding a section of the book that suits her needs, "you're capable of casting certain types of magic, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm pretty freaking clueless."

She waves it off and hands him the tome, pointing at the chapter header, "Why don't you try tracking their magic? If it doesn't work it doesn't work, but if it _does_ , we may be able to stop this thing."

Stiles takes a deep breath, puffs up his cheeks when he blows it out, and, despite the doubt heavy in his honey-amber eyes, nods.

An hour and a not so complicated spell later, and Stiles is... asleep.

"Is that supposed to happen?" Scott asks warily.

"Fuckin' maybe," Jackson just sounds tired, "he is a _Dream_ Shaman after all."

Peter sighs and heads off to fetch a pillow.

"So what do we do now?" Erica asks around a yawn.

"Cuddle," Cora answers, already laying down behind Stiles on the floor. With a shrug, Erica joins her.

* * *

Stiles stands there, watches a mother drink some sort of carbonated water with rattling ice cubes as she chews on a slice of lime while he suffers the heat.

"I didn't raise her this way," She tells him. "I used to garden with her, before she went out to play, and I knew she had the Gift when my gardens bloomed even in winter. So I sent her off to be with her grandmother, to learn how to be an Emissary, we come from a long line of them, though the Gift passed over me."

She offers him a picture in a gilded frame, and the face in it recalls a memory.

"She was a sweet girl," she tells him, sighs. "She was a sweet girl."

"How did she die?" He asks, because, for all that she is alive now, he knows there was a point in time when she wasn't, knows because he has befriended Death, Peter has befriended Death, and he realizes now, she carries that same burden with her, in her every stride.

Ms. Jennifer Blake, he thinks, a woman who's died.

"Her Alpha killed her."

"How awful," Stiles breathes, and she sets her cup aside to take his hands in hers.

"Indeed."

"I don't want to kill her again."

"Then don't, take the Gift from her soul and allow her to be freed."

"How?" He asks, and she smiles, benevolent, leans in to whisper the answer in his ear, offers him a fresh lime when she's done.

* * *

"Are you sure it's her?" Scott asks for the second time as they walk down the hall, and Cora rolls her eyes.

"Pretty goddamn sure," he answers with as much of a smile as he can muster.

"And- what? We're just gonna _go to class_?" His best friend sounds horrified.

"Yep."

"And what if she rea-"

"She's not going to suddenly attack her students," Lydia bites out, her patience a thin thread that Scott's been gnawing at all morning, "she's not even going to know that we know what she is. We're matching her subterfuge with our own, keep up Scott, we've explained this already."

"I still don't get it," he whines, and Allison puts a placating hand on his shoulder.

"I know, buddy," Stiles says sympathetically, "but you don't really have to."

He makes a mournful sound, and Jackson, about to lead Lydia away for _their_ class tells him, "Chin up, McCall."

Scott, who's best known for being sunshine, doesn't let up on his rain cloud until Allison dimples at him, Isaac squeezing his other shoulder and smiling the same, disarming, and enough to make Scott stop thinking too hard.

Stiles wonders if his best friend is being won over by a new kind of relationship, one Allison and Isaac might not have thought of without their Alpha's example, and smiles quietly to himself before squaring his shoulders and preparing for what he's about to do.

* * *

Soulgazing.

He's untrained and only even half aware of what he is, but if this works, she won't be able to sacrifice anyone else, and even if she _could_ , it wouldn't bring her anything to do it.

So after he sits down, his friends surrounding him, and watches as the Darach makes her way to the chalkboard, he clears his throat, and takes his chance when her eyes pierce his, to _dive_ into them.

Watercolor pigments drain into a sea of rushing water and he swims, the waves crash over him, the current drags him under and he can barely breathe, drowning, water-logged, but then instinct takes over, he spins into the drag, goes down, finds an aurorealis of color, crystalized sound. He spreads his wings when water turns to sky and melts into it, lets out a warbling cry as his brothers and sisters, ravens of every caliber and kind join him.

Exhileration, the sound of feathers, the feel, flex of muscle, visceral, primal, and they screech, sing, cry out their joy, loud and unabashed, free and _true_.

Between one breath and the next there's tumult in his mind, a careening sort of change that leaves him stumbling and gasping, and then he's a soaking wet wingless body watching the sky full of birds as they cut a swath through guileless clouds and leave only too-bright sky. His feet dig into soft soil, he's surrounded by trees, and he knows _this_ place as much as he doesn't.

The Preserve.

He can feel the pull of her power. It isn't strong so much as it is dark and loud with fury and scorn and overwhelming heartbreak. The ravens have already been swallowed by the visage of green leaves and deep brown bark, and there is nothing more for him to do but continue his quest, so he tastes her power on his tongue and he follows its strands to its home in her heart.

He feels like he walks for ages, until his feet and legs are sore and aching, the music of the forest, all chirrups and chittering and buzzing, lulling him into something of a trance. Which is why he doesn't notice a figure unmelting out of one of the trees.

It is bejeweled monstrous, antlers and predatory cadence, clicking silver sword-like talons and teeth, eyes hollow like black holes, like something from a nightmare and this _isn't_ a nightmare, it's a piece of her soul, all black-shadow terror. The tall, mangled, disturbing visage stands upright before him with a creak like rusty hinges on a door being slammed abruptly shut and the only thing Stiles can think to do, heart in mouth, palpitating, is fucking run.

All too quickly he realizes his folly, in that her power is now directly behind him and charging, which means it lies securely within the horned monster, and that his wings come to him far too easily, have him weaving through the tips of the trees and away too quickly on an easy glide because the thing that is the embodiment of her power has _roots_ , stays grounded.

Instincts bubble up inside of him, whisper in his ear, and there's something else, peripheral, ghostly, singing.

He flexes his wings, turns right sharply, sweeps low and grabs a branch, thick and sturdy, rips it from its tree, the horned shadow screams, runs thunderously toward him, its roots like snakes, slick and writhing in time with its destructive steps. It gets close enough that Stiles has to swoop up, fast enough to leave him dizzy, but not fast enough to escape deep gashes in both his bare feet. He gasps at the pain, but doesn't falter.

His branch is still held fast in his fist, and even in this place, _especially_ in this place, his belief is _powerful_. And, he finds, it's rather simple to believe that a dream-branch could become a dream-sword (nevermind that they aren't actually dreaming right now, if he thinks too hard on that, or what this is, how he's doing any of it, she'll be able to eject him, he'll lose his tenuous hold and they'll lose any advantage they had). The horned-shadow pauses, for just a moment, startled.

 _Now_ , whispers the ghost-song in the back of his mind, and with a battle-cry, a flurry of air beneath his steadily flapping wings, and a swing of his arm, he strikes, and he strikes _true_.

It is not enough, he knew it wouldn't be, but it doesn't matter, it's the beginning of the battle and already he's winning, they both know what the outcome of this will be.

Claws and horns against wings and sword, unbelievably, the forest is what takes the worst of it, trees get razed with magical outbursts, feathers, red with sticky blood, are littered all over, but eventually Stiles beats the things back, eventually the smoke begins to evaporate, and the horns shatter, break, ash-black hollows out to reveal a woman scarred with grief and rage glittering in her eyes. Stiles knows his pity for her, but he doesn't let it crash into him in this moment, he doesn't let his knowledge of her circumstance (which he had learned intimately through research after the tracking spell he cast and the dream it threw him into, his father's files, and his own damnable experiences with Kali) cause any hesitation, lest that be his downfall.

A parry, a scratch, a strike, a scream from her lips, all heavy-ache and scorn and breaking as he causes her to fall, and then the tip of his sword is scratching the line of her throat, and she is vulnerable, lost, mad rage withering in her eyes and leaving a dark resignation in its wake.

"Kill me," she says, every word and breath bringing a new drop of blood under his blade.

"No," and it isn't his voice, it's the ghost-song, it's the girl standing in the middle of the large tree-stump Stiles has Jennifer braced against. Her hair brown curls, her eyes earth, her button nose, and Stiles can _see_.

He can see Derek weeping against the roots of this very tree, her in his arms, pleading with gods that will never come, his palette soaked in guilt long before he ever truly drowned in it.

"Paige," he breathes, as his sword lowers.

She smiles, goes on bended knee, takes the back of Jennifer's head in her hands, cradling it like it's fragile. The beaten woman gasps, makes a low sound, full of anguish, as her bright eyes fill with tears that spill unrelenting rivers down your cheeks.

"I gave," Paige says, looking down at her with an aching smile, "because I know what it's like to want to _live_. But you didn't truly want to live, did you?" Jennifer closes her eyes, presses her head back into Paige's lap with a sighing sob. "You just wanted revenge."

"It's yours," Stiles says, the sword already becoming wood and leaves in his hand, "the Alphas- _Kali_ \- they're dead."

Paige glances up at him, a flash of something in her eyes that Stiles can't read, before she's wrapping her arms around Jennifer's chest, encasing her whole upper half with the fold of her body.

"I will stay with her," she tells him, "just as you and Peter will stay with Derek."

The branch slips from his fingers, he swallows, nods, "We would never leave him."

"As I will never leave her."

"You know what I have to do."

"Don't take it all, her body needs to heal as much as her mind does... I- I won't let her hurt anyone else."

* * *

When he finally comes out of it, he's crouched down in front of her kneeling form, his hands cupping her tearstained cheeks, their foreheads pressed together. She looks different now, covered in pink scars that weren't there before, claw marks rake up her arms, down her face, but beyond that she's mostly the same, though they both know that her unchecked power is now very much a tiny, tiny flame, where once it was a roaring forest fire.

"It's over," he tells her, "it is done."

A little hiccough escapes her, and she trembles. He slides a card out of his backpocket and presses it into her shaking hand.

"What-"

"A therapist, in the know, her name is Charlotte. She lives in Seattle. I think you should see her."

She can't stay in Beacon Hills, and if she ever harms an innocent again, he will know, and he and his Pack will find her, detain her, lock her up in Eichen's supernatural ward. Considering no one wants to kill her, it's their only option. And although he says none of this out loud, she must read something of it in his expression, because she asks:

"I don't really have a choice, do I?"

Her voice is soft and crushed and heartbroken.

"No," he tells her as he stands, reaches down to help her up, and though her legs are shaky, she wastes no time making her escape from the room. The class, of course, erupts into chaos, then, Erica, Cora, and Isaac are the first to go to him, ask if he's alright, if it worked, if they should go after her. He answers their flurry of questions as best he can, though his mind is still a little muddled and he feels spiritually and emotionally _exhausted_.

In the end, with the knowledge that Stiles will _know_ if she ever hurts anyone again (Paige will... do something, somehow, she wasn't exactly clear), and that her power is all but gone, his Pack subsides. The rest of the class is only mollified by the fact that without a teacher, and with no substitute available on such short notice, the rest of the period is free.

"How long were we...?" Stiles mumbles inquiringly, and Cora raises an eyebrow at him. It felt like _hours_.

"Barely two minutes," she answers, and he firmly decides then and there not to fucking question it. His head is too full already.

* * *

"Sleep over at Scott's, tonight, pup," Stiles distractedly tells Isaac at the end of the school day, and the boy gives him an affronted look.

"I'm not being sexiled again, am I?"

Stiles smiles at the teasing exasperation, but the expression quickly falls when he remembers what he's going to have to do tonight, the painful memories he'll have to bring up in both the men he loves. He only hopes it'll bring them some amount of closure, and even if it doesn't, he knows this isn't something he can keep to himself, it's too important.

"Not quite," he answers, a little more sombrely than he meant to. Isaac gives him a considering look before he just nods and draws him into a hug, which Stiles sags gratefully into.

"Whatever it is," he says, with absolute conviction, "you'll always be Pack and we'll always love you."

His heart swells. He'd had no idea he needed to hear that, but hearing it makes him feel worlds better.

* * *

Peter watches Stiles take a few deep breaths, wringing his hands together, twisting at the joints of his long fingers nervously as he paces. Both he and Derek are sat on the couch, bemused, their lover had told them everything went as planned for the most part, but that he had learned something while he was soulgazing, about a ghost haunting her soul, that it was important, but then words seemed to die on his tongue as anxiety crawled up his throat, silencing him.

"I got a vision, while I was, uh, in her head, I guess? Of- of the root cellar where Paige died," Derek sucks in a breath, and Peter puts a comforting hand on his knee, "the tree, it was magic of some kind?"

"The Nemeton," Peter breathes, as Derek takes the hand on his knee and brings it to his lap, gripping it tightly.

"Well, her death acted as a kind of sacrifice, and the Nemeton, it held her soul for three days, about to dissolve it into nothing but- but fuel." Derek makes a forlorn noise, and Stiles grimaces, pained, coming over to kneel in front of him. "Except it never got the chance. Because Kali tried to kill Julie, her Emissary, on the third day, and Julie crawled to the Nemeton in an effort to save herself."

"So the ghost haunting Ju- _Jennifer_ , was Paige?" Peter asks, awed.

"Yes. She didn't know what Jennifer would do, she didn't know she'd become so corrupt, but she couldn't _do_ anything, only- only now, what is left of the Darach's power is bound to her. She won't let Jennifer hurt anyone else. And she... She told me to watch over you, both of you."

Derek makes a quiet, indecipherable sound, and Stiles surges forward to wrap his arms around the 'were's middle. "Sorry," he murmurs, his voice rough, "but I had to- I couldn't _not_ tell you."

It takes Derek a moment, swallowing convulsively, eyes glazed with grief and pride, one hand firmly in Peter's, the other running through Stiles' hair lovingly.

"No, it's... Thank you. I'm glad you told me, I'm glad I know," he takes a deep shuddering breath, leans into Peter's side even as he holds Stiles closer. "You did good, Stiles. I'm proud of you."

Stiles chokes out a half laugh, half sob. "I love you," he breathes, "I love you both so much."

Peter smiles, shares a look with Derek that holds more than either of them could possibly say.

"And we love you, little raven."

* * *

Charlotte calls him a week later, confiding that she has a new patient, and thanking him for all the business he's unwittingly sent her way, and he subsequently gets her to convince at least one other person into a few sessions- Derek. Stiles doesn't think it'll be much longer before Peter relents to a few sessions himself. Though he has no doubt that the man, being the most insane out of all of them, will hold out 'till last.

As he looks out at the table, not big enough at all to seat his whole Pack, let alone big enough to sustain all the food he'd made for Isaac's birthday, he feels his heart swell. Erica and Cora managed to cuddle up in one chair, while Jackson, Scott and his own dad had taken to standing, Lydia sitting on the arm of Allison's chair, Isaac sitting next to her, Derek and Peter at either end of the table, other pieces of furniture impromptu tables for all the food they had to spare, and Stiles running around full of energy, wanting this to be the _best_ fucking birthday Isaac's ever had, goddamnit.

Not one of them is without a smile on their face, and Stiles finds himself smiling widest, surrounded by Pack, by his family, by _so much love_.

He doesn't know what the Alphas sought to take from him, and, in truth, they took much, but not this, not his family, not the way Peter and Derek look at him, the way Erica and Cora dote on him, the way Isaac accepts him as some sort of half pseudo-mom half pseudo-brother, the way Lydia and even Jackson have become such good friends of his, the way Allison and Scott fret and always have enough optimism and good humor to share, the way his father is _there_ , all of them always willing to protect and fight for him. Not the song of _joy_ and _love_ in his still beating heart.

They couldn't take this, they could _never_ take this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you've enjoyed this! Muah, muah, muah!


End file.
